


Nerdshipping Shenanigans

by dxmichelle



Series: Wayward Wizardry [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Christmas Ball, Cuddles, Engagement, F/M, Fluff, Hogwarts Hospital Wing, Hogwarts: A History, Nerdshipping, Studying, Sweaters, Various stages of relationship, awkward conversation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-09
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-07-28 16:55:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 27,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16245893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dxmichelle/pseuds/dxmichelle
Summary: An AU that is part ofOf Lost Swords and Shadow Magic's greater universe.A collection of mostly unrelated writing prompts based on a "What if" relationship between Hogwarts' two workaholic nerds.





	1. The Kaiba Corp Sweater I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Part 1 of 2] As a bitter storm rages outside, our two workaholic nerds can't sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Kaiba Corp Sweater was originated by [@kaibacorpintern](http://kaibacorpintern.tumblr.com), my Nerdshipping Partner in Crime!

The raging winter wind howled against the windows of the Gryffindor Common Room. This was the third storm the school had seen that year, and definitely the most intense. The sky seemed to have an endless amount of snow to dump onto the castle, and the wind was clearly determined to worm its way through as many cracks as possible. Even with the fireplace still going, the biting draft could still be felt by the lone student still awake in the tower.

Seto sat on the plush sofa near the fireplace with his laptop on his lap. He had barely stayed in the dormitory for more than five minutes before coming to the conclusion that the wind and snow beating on their tower windows was going to keep him up all night.  With that in mind, he didn’t bother changing into his pajamas, pulled on a thick Kaiba Corp sweater over his clothes, and retreated back downstairs.

How Yugi and Bakura managed to sleep through this weather was beyond him.

He stopped paying attention to what time it was after reading through three chapters of  _Defensive Magical Theory_. If even that poor excuse for a textbook wasn’t enough to tire him out, than nothing would. So he moved on to checking in at work, because if he was going to be stuck awake for the time being, at least  _that_  kept his interest.

Sometime after clearing out a chain of emails that had  _nothing_ to do with him, the sound of a door opening and closing was heard from somewhere up the girls’ staircase. Hermione emerged a few moments later with her a rather large book tucked under her arm.

“Let me guess,” said Seto, glancing up, “You can’t sleep.”

She shook her head, hugging the book to her chest. “Not really.”

Hermione then looked towards the common room windows. “It doesn’t help that the storm is trying to blow the tower off the side of the castle.”

Seto nodded his head towards the spot next to him. “You going to try and use Umbridge’s book to knock yourself back out? I already tried that – it doesn’t work.”

“No…this is light reading,” said Hermione, taking the offered seat and drawing her knees up against her chest. “But I don’t think I’d be able to go back to bed if I tried.” She reached for a discarded  _Daily Prophet_. “I saw that more Death Eaters made it out of Azkaban this morning, and I guess it was on my mind when I went to sleep.”

Seto peered over at the headlines and skimmed the first bit of the article. “Antonin Dolohov seems to be the only one they mention in detail …I take it you have a history.”

“He was there at the Department of Mysteries last spring…he almost killed both me and Neville, and if it weren’t for Harry being, well,  _Harry_ , he might have been killed too. He is  _brutal_  when it came to his spells, and seems to favor this one I’ve never heard of before. He cast it silently, so I have no idea what the incantation was to research it – if there even is one – but…” She trailed off, wincing at the memory, and she could have sworn her ribs gave a bit of a throb too. “…Recovery from it took a  _very_ long time.”

After a minute, Hermione tossed the newspaper back onto the table. “I guess, like most people, I felt a lot better when he was still stuck in prison.”

It was clear she didn’t want to go into it more than that so he let the subject drop.

Hermione shifted to lean up against him, and rested her head on his shoulder. “So what’s keeping  _you_  up?”

Seto waved a hand. “My brain doesn’t turn off. There are always too many thoughts running through it.” He shook his head. He didn’t really want to get into the resurfacing nightmares of his past, and she already knew about the rather savage visits by the mysterious Shadow. “It is very rare that I will actually sleep the entire night through.”

Hermione sighed. “How do you ever manage to stay awake during the day?”

“Coffee.”

“Mmm, I should have guessed.” She snuggled in a little closer. “Do you mind if I sit here with you and just…read for a while?”

Seto raised an eyebrow and looked down at her. “That’s the sort of question you ask  _before_ you get comfortable, not after.”

“Well,” Hermione muttered, “It’s late and I’m not thinking straight. Not  _all_ of us can be night-owls like you.”

Seto repositioned himself slightly against the new weight pressed up against his side, and watched her open her book. “That’s not one of your textbooks.”

Hermione shook her head. “After that day where Yugi helped explain about the Millennium Items, I tried to find out as much as I could of Egyptian magic and mythology. I thought something in here might be able to help the Pharaoh’s spirit find his memories.”

Seto raised an eyebrow. “Somehow I don’t think you’re going to solve the Pharaoh’s problems in that book. It’s…a bit more complicated than that.”

“Well, the subject is at least interesting, even if it can’t help.” Hermione said. “Maybe there’s something in here that will help with  _your_ problem.”

Seto snorted and turned back to his laptop. “I doubt there is any information on mysterious Shadows in any book – especially ones that rely on magic resonating from cursed artifacts.”

“You’re probably right,” she sighed, and stretched into a more comfortable position. “But I still plan on reading through this anyway. Even if it can’t do anything for the Millennium Items or shadow monsters, the subject matter is still interesting.”

Seto waved the arm that wasn’t pinned into his side. “Well, don’t let me stop you.”

They sat in silence, the tapping of fingers against the keys or the rustle of turning pages the only indication that the other was still awake.

While it didn’t seem possible, the wind outside managed to pick up even harder, and after a while, Seto’s typing had slowed down once he noticed that his left hand started shaking against the keyboard. It took a moment to realize that there was nothing wrong with his hand, or by extension, his arm –  _he_ wasn’t even the one shaking.

“If you were cold, you should have said something.”

Hermione lifted her head off his shoulder. “It’s fine – it’s just the draft from the windows. It’ll be fine once the wind dies down.”

“Right,” said Seto sardonically, “Because it’s done such a good job at it thus far.”

Hermione huffed. “I’ll be alright…”

“You’re shivering hard enough that it’s making  _me_ shake.”

Hermione sighed, put her head back down, and curled in a little closer. “You’re  _warm_  though,” she said. “I could stay like this for a while.”

“Unfortunately, the way this is going – you’re likely to push me off the couch every time you do that.” He shrugged his left shoulder to gently push her upwards. “Sit up.”

Hermione didn’t realize how much she was pressing into him until she needed to grab onto the back of the sofa to straighten up. Her eyes widened as he leaned forward, pulled off the Kaiba Corp sweater he was wearing over his uniform shirt and sweater vest and handed it to her. “W-what are you doing?”

“You’re freezing. Put it on.”

Hermione looked down at the navy sweater deposited in her arms. “But won’t you be cold?”

“No.”

Hermione was skeptical. “You’re certain?”

Seto raised an eyebrow. “You  _clearly_ need it more than I do.”

Hermione slipped the sweater over her head. It fit, though it was a bit large on her, but most importantly, it felt  _cozy_.

Seto settled back down again. “Better?”

“Mmm, much better.” She glanced up. “Are you sure you’ll be fine?”

“With you practically squashing me? I think I’ll manage.”

“I can’t help it,” she said, and went back to huddling up against him, though without as much of the weight as before.  “You’re comfortable.”

“If you sit like that for too long, you’re going to regret it in your neck or your back come morning.”

“Well,” Hermione muttered softly, “I’ll deal with that in the morning then because I don’t feel like moving.”

“I gathered as much.”

Hermione paused in the middle of turning the page. “You…you’re sure you’re alright with me being here? I’m not distracting you or anything?”

“If I didn’t want you sitting here with me, I wouldn’t have offered it in the first place. And if you’re truly worried about…  _this_ ,” he gestured to her cuddling position, “Don’t. Mokuba does this all the time.”

Hermione smiled, rested her head back down and returned to reading her book, Seto went back to his emails, and they continued again in silence.

Seto lost track of how much time had actually passed, but after a while realized that the pages in her book stopped turning, and there was an increased weight against his left side.

Hermione’s hand lay across the book, keeping it open against the couch, but she had fallen asleep with her head nestled against his shoulder.

Seto shifted slightly to alleviate the numbness that was beginning to seep through his left arm from lack of use, but she didn’t stir.

He took a moment to watch the calm rise and fall of her chest as she peacefully slept, and resigned himself to the fact that he was going to be stuck for a while.

That was fine. It wasn’t as if he was tired anyway. And at least she didn’t seem cold anymore.

He settled a bit heavier against the back of the couch to get more comfortable, and returned to reviewing the lines of code scrolling down his screen.


	2. The Kaiba Corp Sweater II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Part 2 of 2] Hermione's choice in fashion causes quite a stir at breakfast, and realizations are made amongst her friends.

Harry found that he wasn’t the only one arriving late for breakfast that Sunday morning. The previous evening was the first in a while that he was able to wrangle everyone all together for some defensive magic lessons, and they ended up in the Room of Requirement long past curfew. Luckily, Ryou’s sneaky spirit was more than happy to scout ahead and cause enough mayhem in the corridors to send Filch and Umbridge off to the opposite ends of the castle. It was the first time they were able to sneak back to Gryffindor Tower in a while without having to rely on the Marauder’s Map.

Hermione soon hurried into the Great Hall, throwing her hair back into a messy bun as she worked her way over to them. “Sorry, I lost track of time this morning.”

Without even looking up from reading an email on his phone, Seto shifted over to make a space for her as she reached for both a plate of eggs and his discarded copy of the day’s  _Daily Prophet_.

“That’s fine,” said Harry. “We all got down late.” He looked up from his breakfast to greet her, and his eyes widened. 

Ron arrived a few minutes later with Yugi. “Oh good, there’s still plenty of food,” said Ron, taking a seat on the bench opposite Seto, “I’m  _famished_ after –”

He suddenly cut himself off, his mouth hanging open in shock.

Hermione glanced up from the article she was reading. “After…?” It took her a moment to register that the reason he had stopped speaking so abruptly was because he was staring right at her. Every few seconds his eyes would dart between her and Seto, who, with his phone and morning coffee, was completely unaware of what went on around him.

It then dawned on her that Ron wasn’t the only one staring. Yugi had paused with his fork halfway to his mouth, and Harry’s brow was furrowed, and she could practically hear the gears turning in his head. 

Hermione shifted slightly to look past Yugi’s shoulder. A few girls from the Ravenclaw table were looking at her too, and were huddled close together, whispering something amongst themselves.

“What did I miss?” Frowning, she turned back to her friends. “Is there something on my face?”

Harry shook his head, and cleared his throat awkwardly. “Um…Hermione…?”

“What?” she placed her fork down.  _What is with everyone today_? 

“Is…” Harry swallowed nervously. “Is there anything we should know?”

“About what?”

“Uh…” Harry scratched at the back of his head, not quite sure how to pose his next question. “Did uh…something happen that you haven’t told us?” 

Hermione waved her hand, visibly frustrated. “ _What_ are you talking about?”

Ron pointed. “Where’d you get that sweater?”

Hermione turned beet red and glanced down at her clothes. “…Is  _that_ what this is about?”

“Well…” said Yugi, though he had recovered from his initial shock, and even looked a bit amused as he tried to hide his grin behind a goblet of pumpkin juice. “There’s not a lot of Kaiba Corporation sweaters running around Hogwarts.”

Seto didn’t bother to look up from his phone. “Then asking where it came from was pointless.  _Obviously_ , it was mine.”

Ron scowled at her. “…so why are  _you_ wearing it?”

Before Hermione could even say anything, Seto set the phone down harshly against the table and leveled Ron a rather annoyed look. “It’s the middle of winter in an old drafty castle.  _Figure it out_.”

Shaking his head, he swung around the bench and got up. 

“Weekend call to Mokuba?” asked Yugi.

Seto nodded, irritated. “I’ll give him your regards, as usual.”

Yugi smiled. “Thanks!”

Ron continued to give her an odd look, even after Seto left the Great Hall, and Hermione glared at him before turning back to the abandoned newspaper. 

Harry cleared his throat again. “So uh…you two aren’t…”

The icy stare she sent him immediately shut him up. “Right. Never mind.”

They continued to eat in silence until a quiet buzz was heard at the table. Yugi and Harry looked around, puzzled. That sounded awfully close to a cell phone, but Seto had already left the Great Hall, and Yugi’s phone was up in the dormitory. So where did it come from?

Sighing, Hermione put down the paper, reached into the pocket of her jeans and, to everyone’s complete surprise, pulled out a rather familiar looking silver device.

_SK: Mokuba wants to say hello. 2nd floor corridor, right side, next to where Sprout set up her temporary office._

Harry watched as Hermione smiled at reading whatever was on the screen, and then got up after a final bite of her breakfast. “I’ll catch you guys later.”

As she walked off, typing out some sort of reply, Ron turned to the rest of his friends incredulously. “You don’t think….”

Yugi nodded. “Mhm. They’re definitely dating.”


	3. Engagement Interview I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Part 1 of 2]The media's rumors and speculation about their relationship is finally laid to rest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This takes place about three years post-series for both YGO and HP, so in this snippet Seto and Hermione are both 20 years old.

The quiet of the morning was broken by the slight buzz and soft keys of a piano coming from the phone on the bedside table. After about twenty seconds it quieted down only to start up again a few minutes later.

A hand shot out from beneath the bedcovers and groped around at the offending device until it turned off. An eye opened to see just who had decided to call and then text him a message and ruin his peaceful morning before the phone was flung across the room like a frisbee until it hit the wall.

Seto huffed and propped himself up against his pillows, rubbing the last bit of sleep from his eyes as the person next to him sighed sleepily and said, “I think you broke it this time.”

Seto blinked through the dark to where he assumed his phone landed. “That thing is built like a tank. It’s probably fine.”

Hermione clutched the blankets closer as she rolled over to face him. “I heard it shatter. That makes what – third time this month?”

“Second.”

Hermione rolled her eyes. “Seto – it’s only the _fifth_. The month just started.”

Seto merely shrugged his shoulders. “At least it wasn’t the office _this time_. Mokuba was wondering when we’re getting up.”

Hermione frowned and shifted to sit up beside him. “It’s a bit early, though. It’s still dark in here.”

A ghost of a smirk formed on his face before looking towards the windows. “The curtains are deceiving. It’s past eight.”

Hermione blinked. “And that’s considered _late_?”

Seto adjusted the sleeve of his shirt as he slid out of bed. “I’m usually up at six.”

“Ugh,” Hermione flopped back down. “I don’t know how you get through the day getting up so early and then not going to sleep until past midnight.”

“Determination and sheer stubbornness.”

Hermione giggled quietly. “Not coffee?”

“…That helps too.”

“Mm, and lots of it,” she added, and watched him open the door to his closet and disappear inside.

“Remind me again why we’re doing this?” Seto scowled as he reemerged with a smoky-grey suit and tie draped over his arm. “You know I hate interviews. My life – _our_ privacy – is none of their concern.”

Hermione nodded as she also got out of bed and moved towards the window, parting one side of the curtain to look out amongst the back yard of the mansion. The morning sunlight reflected across the sparkling ring on her left hand.

“I know,” she said, “But I’m tired of being chased by those vultures everywhere I go.”

Seto grumbled as he buttoned up his shirt. “You can thank the American press for that. Their level of obsession with everything _except_ actual news is astounding.”

Hermione let go of the curtain and turned to face him. “We haven’t been to the United States in over a month.”

“Yeah,” Seto muttered, and he moved to stand in front of the full-length mirror hanging on the back of the closet door. “And when was the last time you traveled anywhere in the Muggle public’s eye without getting accosted? Ever since that magazine snapped that photo of us out in New York, you have not been left alone.”

Hermione grabbed the tie off the bed and handed it to him. “That was the whole point of doing this, wasn’t it? Give them what they want so they don’t bother us anymore?”

Seto sighed. “Allowing one interview isn’t going to stop them. It’s merely going to give them fuel to ignite more rumors. You will _still_ be followed and stories will continue to circulate the Internet about you until the end of time.”

“Then how come these mindless articles don’t post too much about you, or Mokuba?”

Seto finished adjusting his tie. “They used to. When we were in America opening the first Kaiba Land, press followed us everywhere. I personally could care less of the garbage they post about me, but I wasn’t going to stand for them attacking Mokuba. So when the paparazzi were discovered following him to the school he was attending, they went from noisy pests to a security threat. Sufficed to say, that magazine is no longer in business, and a lot of the rabid reporting stopped. Until now.”

“If it’s not going to stop them,” said Hermione, wandering into the closet and looking through her clothes, “Then why would Roland suggest this in the first place?”

“Because confirming what everyone already seems to know protects _you_ as well. They know I won’t respond to their baited articles about me, but I will if they end up endangering my family….”

He took her left hand in his and raised it up to look at her ring. “…Which you are now a part of.”

“I _can_ take care of myself, you know,” she said, her lips twisting upwards in a humored smirk. “I know you remember getting quite a few trounces in the Room of Requirement.”

Seto raised an eyebrow. “In a world of magic, yes. _This is not_. And so long as the media here in Domino continue to regale me as some sort of royal figure because I decided to have a life outside of my office, you won’t be left alone. It’s ludicrous.”

“So the general reasoning behind this is to satisfy the masses, and silently remind everyone that if they wander too close to me you’re going to rain your rage down on them all?”

Seto shrugged nonchalantly. “Roland would have worded it differently, but that was his general idea.”

Hermione playfully swatted his arm. "Then you answered your own question."

They both turned as rapid knocking sounded on the door. _“Are you two up yet?!”_

Seto rolled his eyes. “Yes.”

Mokuba poked his head inside. “What is _taking so long_?”

Seto performed a dramatic sweeping bow. “Our Queen isn’t ready yet.”

“Oh!” Mokuba covered his eyes and whirled around to face the door. “Sorry!”

Hermione looked down at her nightclothes. “I _am_ dressed, you know!”

Mokuba let out a loud, goofy exhale. “Oh, that’s a relief.”

The younger Kaiba was just as energetic at fifteen as he was at ten. His voice had deepened somewhat, and he finally earned his growth spurt, though not to the extent that he wanted. His dreams of sprouting up like a tree were dashed when he settled around Téa’s height.

At least he could say he was taller than Yugi.

“When did you get back?” he asked, “I think I was in bed when you got in.”

“It was late,” said Hermione, “The flight was delayed. Aside from the driver, I’m certain Seto was the only one in the house still awake.”

“Oh,” Mokuba said, noticing the broken phone on the floor. “I guess I really shouldn’t have woken you up, huh?”

Hermione smiled. “It’s alright. At least it wasn’t…what, _six_ am, when _some_ people get up.” She reached out and grabbed Mokuba’s arm. “Come. I’ve never done this before, so help me pick out something appropriate.”

Mokuba grinned. “Okay!” He turned to his big brother and waved a hand, shooing him out the door. “No peeking!”

Seto shook his head slightly. “It’s an interview Mokuba. It’s not like we’re going to a party.”

Mokuba paused. “Well, yeah. But they’re live streaming it.”

Hermione’s face paled. Seto’s eye twitched.

Mokuba blinked. “You…didn’t know?”

Seto scowled. “Did Roland arrange this?”

Mokuba shook his head. “No, someone in PR did. But they had to send him the list of questions ahead of time for approval first.”

“Hn.” Seto huffed. “Reporting a transcript wasn’t enough? They have to record it too?”

“It’ll be alright,” Hermione said gently. She reached up on her tiptoes and pecked his cheek. “It’s just one, and it’ll be fine, really. Go stew in your morning coffee while I get ready.”

~~*~~

“You don’t think they’ll really dig into my life, will you? I mean, after this is all done,” said Hermione. “It’s not like I can proclaim to the world that I work for the British Ministry of Magic.”

“Then don’t tell them what you do.”

Hermione sighed and rested her head on his shoulder as the limo drove into the heart of Domino City. “I don’t want to seem like a freeloader. I _do_ have a job.”

“Say it’s classified.”

“Heh, that sounds like she’s a spy,” said Mokuba. He had his phone in hand and was busy playing mindless games on the ride to Kaiba Corp.

Seto took her hand and rubbed the back of it with his thumb. “Just remember they can ask whatever they want. You don’t _have_ to answer them. If there’s something you don’t want to get into, scratch it off the list before we start. They’re _going_ to be invasive. I’ve resigned to having half of my life scrutinized. But you don’t have to.”

Seto’s phone buzzed, and he scowled after reading the message that popped up onto the screen. “They’re early.”

Mokuba’s eyes widened. “I thought it wasn’t for another _hour_!”

“It’s not. They apparently want to set up their equipment.”

“So much for relaxing before they got there,” Hermione said, yawning slightly. “Do you think they’ll start early and finish ahead of time?”

“Not if it’s being aired live,” Seto said, “They’ll just be in our hair longer.”

“Goody,” said Mokuba, and he flashed his brother a bitter smile. “Have fun!”

“You’re not going to be in the room with us?” asked Hermione.

Mokuba shook his head. “Nah. I’m gonna fiddle down in the VR lab.”

Seto pretended to look offended as the car pulled into the parking garage. “Now I feel hurt. My own brother isn't going to watch.”

Mokuba snorted. “It’s not like you’re gonna say anything I don’t already know.”

Seto chuckled. “Touché.”

Hermione shifted to stare up at Seto quizzically. “Your phone is still broken.”

“I was going to replace it when we got in,” said Seto, “I’m surprised it lost the battle against the wall.”

With the Millennium Items long gone, his ability to perform magic had diminished. Not entirely though, he still had his wand and was able to cast spells, but it took a much greater effort than when he still wielded the Rod. But it was fine. While magic made some things easier, he generally preferred to go without it.

“And what of the enchantments you cast on it back at Hogwarts?” she asked. “Are you going to set them up all over again?”

“We’re not at Hogwarts,” Seto countered. “Most of them aren’t needed anymore.”

“That’s true,” said Hermione, amused, “But it did make it stronger. And you tend to throw this around a lot.” She took it from him and pulled her wand from her jacket pocket. With a few quick taps against the cracked glass, it was good as new.

Seto glanced out the window. Roland was standing, waiting by the door to the elevators. The sooner they got in, the sooner the reporting crew would be out of their hair. “Let’s get this over with….”


	4. Engagement Interview II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Part 2 of 2] The media's rumors and speculation about their relationship is finally laid to rest.

“Well, we’re just a few moments from going live,” said the reporter, turning from her colleagues keeping an eye on the recording equipment to the subjects of her interview. “Are you ready?”

“A little nervous,” Hermione admitted. They sat centered on one of the twin office couches.

Seto placed a hand reassuringly on her knee and leaned close. “Don’t watch the cameras,” he said quietly. “Ignore them as if they’re not even there.”

Intertwining both hands around his, she nodded.

“First Q&A I take it?” asked the reporter. She sat directly across from them on the other sofa.

Hermione nodded. “Especially one that’s…you know, being broadcast all over the place.”

“I’m surprised no one in London’s tracked you down,” said the reporter curiously.

Thankfully, no one had to answer that as the man behind the recording equipment motioned that they were starting.

“Good morning, Domino City, this is Mina Yuko, and we’re live with Duelist Champion Seto Kaiba and his new fiancé Hermione Granger.  Before we begin, I wanted to give you both my congratulations on your engagement. I know the rumors have been speculating for a while now, so thank you for allowing the Domino Post to share your story.”

Hermione smiled slightly. Seto didn’t budge.

“…Now, it’s generally understood that you don’t like interviews of any kind, so we were definitely surprised to say the least when approached to have a sit down today.”

“That’s not _entirely_ true,” said Seto, “I’ve given talks about the company, and I’ve sat for stories regarding dueling or my work.”

“Your quick rise to celebrity status here in Domino has made you quite a public figure, hasn’t it?” said Mina, “It’s only natural, considering your youth and influence both in and out of the dueling arena, that the people are curious about you both.” She added, more to Hermione, “Especially since it seems your relationship appeared almost out of nowhere. I imagine there are a great number of women that wish they could be in your shoes.”

“They can be curious about whatever they want,” said Seto, ignoring the reporter’s last statement, “But I’m a _private_ citizen. Running a business and tournament dueling do not make one a public figure. That’s reserved for people who work in the interest of the people, like politicians. Which is why we’re doing _one_ interview to satisfy the masses.”

The ‘so we can be left alone’ was unspoken, but the intent behind the end of his statement was clear. Hermione gave his hand a quick squeeze, more so to tell him to ‘Watch your temper!’ than anything else.

“Right,” said Mina, catching the tone shift in his voice. “Well, let’s get right into it, then. A lot of the media speculation around you two is more one-sided, naturally, but we’ll start at the beginning. When and where did you two first meet?”

“At school,” said Hermione, glancing up at Seto. “It’s been…four years now?”

Seto nodded. “I had taken time away from work to take classes at a school abroad. We met there.”

“That’s interesting,” said Mina, “I was under the impression you had completed education early. Was this an exchange program?”

“…Not quite,” said Seto carefully, “I just chose to take subjects of interest, and far enough away that if the office needed to keep hounding me, they’d have to get up in the early hours to do it.”

“And may I ask what school?”

“A private school in Scotland,” said Hermione. “We attended some of the same classes together.”

 It was obvious they weren’t going to mention the name, so Mina let it drop. “What subjects?”

Hermione paused. Sure Potions and Herbology could pass for Chemistry and Botanty, but what about Transfiguration? Arithmancy? It’s not like they could proclaim to the world that they attended a school of _magic_.

Seto didn’t miss a beat. “Actuarial mathematics. She was one of the few people on campus who _wasn’t_ looking at me as if I were a piece of meat.”

“Well, I would imagine, with the level of success you had acquired up to that point, that you would be pretty recognizable. And I’m sure it doesn’t need saying that you’ve acquired quite a fan base. Were you aware of just who he was when you met him?”

“Yes, and no,” said Hermione, “I’ve heard of him before and I’ve seen a few articles about him here and there, and I read them. I mean, who _wouldn’t_ be interested in reading about someone who’s accomplished so much at their age?” She stroked the back of his hand with her thumb. “But if you’re asking if I was pining after him like a lovesick puppy, then no. I wasn’t. He had an air about him that clearly said ‘I want to be left alone’, so for the most part, I did.”

“Now, you have a reputation of – if I can be blunt –being cold,” said the reporter to Seto. She turned to Hermione. “Was that something you had to deal with as well?”

Hermione felt him tense slightly, and patted his arm lightly. “I think, given the chance to get to know him, he’s not that sort of a person at all. It _definitely_ was not love at first sight or any of that fairytale nonsense. But he is a private person, so this is just a product of time and patience.”

Seto cracked the barest of a smile at her. “A _great deal of patience_.”

“Did anyone introduce you to each other?”

“I remember being heavily jetlagged at the time,” Seto said. “I met her and her friends roughly at once, but no one ‘set us up’ on a date, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

Hermione nodded. He (and Yugi and Ryou) were knee-deep in the Millennium Item magic, and she was at the Weasleys for the summer before the next year at Hogwarts. But admitting any of it would both not be believed and breach the International Statute of Secrecy. “I think it was in…London when we first met? Buying books and supplies for school that year.”

It was probably best to leave out the studying and relearning of material at the Burrow. No one really needed to know they were reviewing the _Standard Book of Spells: Grades 1-5_.

“Of course, naturally, you didn’t go from friends to engaged right away. How long have you two secretly been a couple?”

“Well…” Hermione glanced up at Seto before looking back to Mina, “It’s hard to say? I think lines blurred quite a bit at times. The first two years we knew each other were rather hectic.”

Seto inwardly chuckled. Hectic was _one_ way of describing their part in the Wizarding War. And that didn’t even count any of the shenanigans faced with parting ways with the Millennium Items. But all of that was laid to rest some time ago. “It’s been at least two years.”

“And once you two were officially an item, Hermione, did you find it difficult adjusting to the fame and exposure that came with being his girlfriend?”

“I don’t think so?” she said, clutching his hand a little tighter. “We didn’t spend a lot of time out in the public eye. It wasn’t until fairly recently that I’ve been on the run, so to speak, by the media. We’ve tried to keep things quiet for that reason.”

“Honestly, if we want to talk difficulty, it’s been in distance,” said Seto.

“Oh, I assumed you returned to Japan with Seto after his time at the school was done,” said Mina.

“Not quite, no,” said Hermione, “Seto stayed in the UK for about a year after taking classes. It was after that point that he returned here to continue his work full time again, and I started a new job. We’ve been juggling visits since then.”

“What kind of work do you do?”

“I act as a liaison for a…private organization. I do a lot of traveling between Britain and Japan for work.”

“May we ask what that organization is?”

Hermione looked a bit uncomfortable, and leaned slightly closer towards Seto. “I-I’d rather not say on public broadcast. But I do travel quite a bit, and with his office branch in New York and a new one opening in…” She looked up at him, “I _can_ say, right? It’s no secret?”

Seto shrugged. “Kaiba Corporation is opening a regional branch in London to cover the European market.”

“Right,” Hermione continued, “So I travel a bit, and he’s been back and forth from Japan to America, and now in and out of London, so we don’t get to see each other for long periods. We try to coordinate our trips, but it doesn’t always work out.”

Mina smiled coyly, “You’re not setting up shop in the UK just to make it easier to see each other?”

“ _No_ ,” Seto had to check himself before he rolled his eyes on camera. “Duel Monsters was already popular in the States and Japan, but there is definitely a greater interest in the West now that needs addressed.” He glanced down at Hermione, “And being closer to her and her family is a bonus.”

“Now, since we’re on the subject, do you have an ace monster?”

Hermione blinked. “I-I’m sorry?”

“Duel Monsters? A favorite card to use.”

“ _Oh_ ,” Hermione laughed, “I don’t play the game.”

Mina’s eyes widened in total surprise.

“Why is that so hard to believe?” asked Seto.

“Well,” she said awkwardly, “I would have thought, seeing how the game has had such a profound impact on your life and career, that she would have a similar interest. Do you think you’ll learn to play?”

Hermione shook her head. “I’ll go to any of his future matches and support him of course, but he knows I’m not interested in it.”

“I don’t need someone who is my carbon copy,” said Seto, “We’re allowed to have our own tastes in hobbies, and I don’t intend to try and change hers just to suit mine.”

“So what are your hobbies then, if I may ask?” said Mina, “Since dueling isn’t one of them.”

Hermione’s face flushed. “Books. I love reading.”

“Any favorite genre or title?”

“No,” Hermione smiled. “I’ll try almost anything if the premise behind it catches my eye.”

“Alright,” Mina smiled, “And now let’s move forward to what a lot of our viewers are most interested in. Your engagement. Now I know a lot of mainstream press started running wild a short while ago while you two were in America. Were you already engaged then?”

“No, that was…a week before or so?” said Hermione. “I don’t remember exactly, but it was after we left New York.”

“So, tell us – how did it happen? Was it traditional? Was it something you were expecting?”

“Well…” Hermione began, turning to meet his eyes again, but before she could say anything else, he spoke, and it definitely wasn’t anything she expected him to say with a pure deadpanned face.

“I baked the ring into a cake and she nearly ate it.”

“You’re kidding,” Mina grinned, and she wasn’t the only one laughing.

Hermione swatted at his arm, trying and failing to maintain a straight face. “ _That is not what happened_!”

“Okay, so no ring in a cake,” said Mina, “Was it over dinner, something traditionally romantic?”

“It was something we had seriously discussed a couple of times,” said Seto, eyes locking on Hermione’s, and she gripped his hand a little tighter. “It wasn’t completely unexpected.”

“The actual proposal was very private,” said Hermione, thinking back on it with a fond smile. “I wouldn’t say it was overly romantic in the traditional sense, but for us it was perfect.”

“Are there any more details to go along with that?”

“There are,” said Seto, intertwining his fingers along hers again. “But you don’t get to hear them.”

Mina smiled. “Not going to lie, I’m sure I speak with the viewers when I say we’re a teeny bit disappointed to not hear more. We will all have to wonder and come up with our own theories then. I take it the families know?”

Seto raised an eyebrow. “They certainly do _now_ , don’t they?”

Hermione squeezed his hand again, digging her nails into his palm.

“Mokuba knew. The little gremlin has been trying to spy on us for a while now,” said Seto.

Hermione pulled a face. “What are you talking about?”

Seto shook his head, chuckling. “My brother, apparently, has been waiting for this to happen for quite some time.”

Hermione sat forward along the couch, ignoring the journalist entirely to look incredulously at Seto. “He’s been spying or eavesdropping on us this whole time?”

“Past few weeks.”

Hermione’s jaw dropped. “How did _you_ know?”

Seto smirked and nodded his head towards the other side of the room to where Roland was observing the interview through the recording equipment with the tech boys. “Roland sold him out.”

Hermione’s jaw dropped. “I don’t believe it.”

Seto snorted. “ _I can_.”

“Well, he’s _your_ brother. _You_ raised him.”

“I know. He’s a little troublemaker.”

Hermione sighed, but settled against the back of the couch again. “Yes, well, he’s not so little anymore is he?”

Having been completely dropped from their conversation, Mina coughed awkwardly.

“S-sorry,” Hermione blushed. “I think we got a little off track. What were we supposed to be on about?”

“How did your parents take the news?”

“Oh, very well,” said Hermione, “They’re both very happy for us. Despite wanting to take our time with our engagement, my mother already can’t wait to go shopping with me.”

“Was it difficult introducing each other to the family?”

“She had met Mokuba briefly during a break from school,” said Seto, and he had to resist the urge to visibly make a face at the memory of it. “And then during his visit to Scotland; though, they were less than stellar circumstances.”

“But you two weren’t an item at the time,” said Mina. “Why was it less than stellar?”

“I was laid up following an accident,” said Seto shortly, and Hermione barely managed to hide the frown on her face.

“Nothing serious, I hope?”

Seto resisted the urge to roll his eyes again and gestured to his leg with his free arm, ignoring the odd look Hermione gave him as he spoke. “I broke my leg and got… _sick_. I’ve clearly recovered since then, but I’m pretty sure the two of them formed some sort of bond during that time.”

Mina nodded and looked back to Hermione. “Now that your parents have met him and they know who Seto Kaiba is, do they worry about all the fame you’re bound to receive?”

Hermione shook her head. “I don’t think so. Well, my father probably, because he can tend to worry at times, but they both know I can handle myself. We  tend to keep to ourselves rather than flaunt our relationship everywhere, so I think we’ll be fine.”

“I suppose this is one-sided now, but were you nervous about meeting her family?”

Seto looked to Hermione. “It was… _interesting_.”

Hermione laughed lightly. “That’s the long and short of it.”

“And Seto – we may be going off of old knowledge on this, but we’re under the impression that only a Kaiba can helm the ship here. Knowing that the company was started by your predecessor, do you think Gozaburo Kaiba would be proud of your engagement and the possible continuing of the family line?”

Hermione glanced over worriedly as the mood in the room immediately dropped. Seto’s jaw had completely tensed, and his grip tightened around hers this time, much harder than any of the comforting squeezes done up to that point. Now it was getting painful, and she clasped her other hand back atop his and pried some of the pressure off of her squashed fingers.

“My stepfather,” said Seto, keeping his voice carefully even, “Is probably doing _somersaults_.”

Mina coughed awkwardly, avoided Seto’s glare and looked back to her notes. That was _not_ the subject to breach, apparently, and she mentally scratched her two follow-up questions off her list. “Alright, so – knowing you two met and have lived abroad, is there a general plan of where to settle down? Are you going to stay in Domino?”

“It’s something we’re still considering,” said Hermione, while trying to get Seto to loosen back up. “I’ll still travel back and forth for work, at least for now, but I don’t think we’ve made a plan to settle in any one place.”

“Well, with the Kaiba Corporation branch opening in England, will you leave operations here to someone else and man the helm there instead?”

“No,” said Seto, “I prefer to be close to the development of our products, and that only occurs here. We probably won’t make any big moves until Mokuba graduates high school.”

“That seems fair.” Mina said. “So, rounding back to the original conversation track, any wedding plans already hammered down? Is there a date? Any details you’d like to share?”

“We really haven’t made any plans, not yet,” said Hermione.

“It’ll be a small, _private_ event,” said Seto. “Definitely not like that socialite in the States that invited enough people to populate a small town.”

Mina tilted her head curiously. “Did _you_ get one?”

Seto raised an eyebrow. “Who _didn’t_ she invite to her wedding? I’ve never even met her. And considering they divorced not six month later, it was all a publicity stunt. Yeah, _no thanks_ to that.”

“I hear Maximillion Pegasus attended.”

“Good for him,” said Seto, “I had better things to do.”

“Ours will probably be family and friends only,” said Hermione, “We just have to hash out where to have it. His life is of course here, but my family and friends are back in the UK. But there’s plenty of time to figure it out. We’re not in a rush.”

“Have you two given any thought to the future? Plans for a family?”

Hermione blushed. “Oh,” she said awkwardly, looking up at him. “We…haven’t quite had a serious discussion about it yet.” That wasn’t _entirely_ true, they had talked about it once before, but she wasn’t about to share it on live television. There were some topics that were plainly none of the public’s business.

“We only just got engaged,” said Seto. “One hurdle at a time.”

Mina smiled at them both. “I see. Well, that covers the time we had. Thank you both for sitting with me today, and congratulations again on your engagement!”

The cameraman gave a signal once the feed had been cut and Mina slouched back against her seat. “For being nervous about the interview, you did great!”

“Thanks,” said Hermione, leaning against Seto, “Not looking at the camera helped, but I’m glad it’s over all the same.”

“You’re a natural in front of the camera,” said Mina, “Maybe we’ll get you to sit for one at another time?”

Seto scowled.

“I don’t think so,” said Hermione, “At least, not for a while.”

Mina shrugged, “Ah well. Worth a shot! Excuse me while I help the guys close up shop.”

Hermione looked up at her fiancé  in disbelief as Mina got up to help the packing of their equipment. “ _‘Broke your leg and got sick’_?”

Seto blinked. “Well…I did.”

Hermione huffed and massaged his knee. “More like _shattered_ it.”

“Well,” he said quietly, “Getting into how that happened would have opened a can of worms. Just like the details of most of your life past age ten.”

“Yeah….” Hermione hesitated. “You don’t think…that after this someone will go digging, will you?”

“They won’t find much of anything,” said Seto, watching as a technician hauled a piece of equipment out of the office and down towards the elevators. “They’ll either think  you live an incredibly private life, odd in this online day and age, but not unheard of – or that I, the unfeeling monster devoid of human emotions, created you in one of my labs and you’re actually a robot.”

Hermione pulled away from him. “ _What?!”_

Seto laughed. “Just wait – I’ve spent so long putting out a specific persona that no one is going to think I’ve actually gotten engaged to someone.”

“Despite saying so on live television?”

“Despite that, yes. It’ll end up on some offbeat magazine cover, and then it’ll eventually be forgotten.”

“Hm. And…Mokuba? He was _really_ doing all of that, or did you make that up?”

“Oh no, he was,” said Seto. “It was actually _his_ idea to bake your ring into a cake.”

“Well, it would have been weird, considering you don’t bake. Instant suspicion.”

Seto snorted. “I would have been more concerned with you swallowing the ring by accident. Or breaking a tooth.”

“Well,” said Hermione, “It’s a good thing my parents are both dentists.”

“Or you could just use magic.”

Hermione grinned. “That too. But they weren’t happy that I used magic to correct my teeth once before. Being Muggles, they’re clearly more comfortable with the conventional methods.”

Seto got up off the couch and moved to his desk once the last of the reporting crew had gone. “When do you go back home?”

“Just under two weeks,” said Hermione. “Harry wanted help with a side project involving some foreign runes. Why?”

“When we were at your parents last,” said Seto, “Your mother expressed wanting a photo of us.”

Hermione blinked. What did that have to do with when she returned to her desk at the British Ministry of Magic? “When did she say that?”

“While you were out of the room,” said Seto.

“You don’t like having your photo taken though,” said Hermione.

“I know,” said Seto, “But it would be something nice for them, for Christmas.”

“That’s a sweet idea,” she said thoughtfully, leaning along the back of his chair. “So…what are you doing?”

“Looking up a reputable photographer in Britain.”

Hermione paused. “Just to have a picture taken? You don’t have to pay someone – I’m sure Mokuba would be more than willing to help out with that.”

Seto tapped a few keys, bringing up a new search. “I also figured we’d get engagement photos out of the way at the same time.”

“Oh,” said Hermione, “That’s something else then. But you don’t want to do them here? I would have thought you would know photographers after all of the publicity work for the orphanages and from dueling over the years.”

“I do,” said Seto, “But this is… _different_. And to be fair, I don’t trust the ones I’ve worked with here to _not_ leak anything to the press. I swear sometimes I don’t know who are worse – the paparazzi here in Domino, or the ones in the States.”

“Hm. Well, British Muggles aren’t that much better.”

“I’m not as well-known there,” said Seto, “At least…not yet. But I was thinking of having the photos taken here….”

She watched as he brought up a few screens on the laptop and her eyes lit up. “Tresco Island? _Ooh, can we_?”

Seto grinned slyly. “I already made reservations.”

“Y-you did?” Hermione stammered, “But this is the first we’ve talked about having photos taken.”

“I know.”

Hermione swatted his shoulder. “ _Sneaky_!” She gazed fondly at the website photos. “Are we going to the gardens?”

“I figured that would be the best backdrop…unless you wanted to go somewhere else?”

“Oh, no,” Hermione quickly shook her head, “The gardens will be lovely! When do we go?”

“A few weeks from now.”

Hermione gasped. “So soon?”

Seto shrugged. “We can do a formal and informal set, have one of the prints sent to your parents, and use another one for the guest invitations we’ll _eventually_ send out.”

Hermione perched herself on the edge of his desk with a sly smile on her face. “I didn’t think I’d picture you to be the wedding planner type.”

“Normally, I wouldn’t be – but if I left it up to a wedding planner, our day would probably end up a media circus.”

Hermione pulled a face. “I don’t want to think about that. I’m already worried about the aftermath of the interview we just did.”

Seto sighed. “And, like everything else, we’ll deal with that if and when it happens. But in the meantime…” He reached over and pulled her onto his chair with him. “…Let’s search for a photographer.”

Hermione resettled herself across his legs, mindful of keeping some weight off of his left side. “Don’t you have work to do?”

Seto snorted. “When _don’t_ I. But you’re here, and honestly, this is much more enjoyable than reading project reports.”

“I don’t want to keep you if you’ll be busy.”

Seto laughed and tightened his arm around her. “What are they going to do, report me to the boss?”

Hermione giggled and tugged him closer slightly by his tie for a quick kiss. “Well, in that case, let’s find ourselves a photographer.”


	5. Worries

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous tumblr prompt: Seto trying to convince Hermione he’s no good/damaged goods and Hermione having none of his BS

First, it was Pegasus, dangling Mokuba by his soul, trapped in a trading card, all for the delight of watching him try and boot Yugi off of Duelist Kingdom in a duel that wasn’t even meant to be part of that farce of a tournament. He fought – but he failed, and the blast from his rotting dragon’s defeat threw him over the edge of the castle wall.

But before he hit the ground, he was suddenly standing in the middle of Domino City before a circle of Rare Hunters, duel disks at the ready. He had smirked – with Obelisk in his deck, this wouldn’t take long, and he activated his duel disk……until the helicopter flew around the buildings, too low to the ground, but high enough to dangle his brother dangerously on a rope.

Obelisk never made it to his hand, nor did any of his Blue Eyes, and before his life points could even hit zero, Mokuba was dropped, too far from the ground, and too far from him to do anything about it.

Before he could even register what was happening, Seto then found himself in Dartz’s temple, as the mad lunatic used his magic seal to knock him off his feet. There was just enough time to transfer a boost of power to Yami before his vision went dark, but he could still hear someone pounding on the seal trapping him into the duel arena.

Mokuba’s scream pierced through him as he turned over in bed, but was soon replaced, as the temple melted away to the desert, and a woman with long silvery hair was thrown back into him as she was hit with a blast of purple-hued magic.

The Shadow loomed over him as he cradled the woman in his arms, the light fading from her eyes, and it taunted him with talk of powers and dragons. But then the scene disappeared almost as soon as it had come, but the Shadow remained. They were in a different temple now, but it was Hermione in his arms, coughing blood, her hand weakly reaching up for his face.

And the Shadow wasn’t alone. Gozaburo, taller than even the Shadow itself, circled him like a vulture, repeating the harsh words he had heard time and time again as a child, drowning out whatever it was Hermione was trying to tell him before her eyes closed and her arm dropped limply to her side….

The Millennium Rod flared on the bedside table, and Set phased out, sighing deeply as he watched Seto turn over again. The Shadow – the  _real_ one, wasn’t here, but for all the suffering Seto was enduring this night, he might as well have. His host hadn’t had such a rough evening since the attack at Christmastime.

Set activated the Rod again, placed his hand over Seto’s forehead, and started whispering a spell he had picked up years and years ago, from Priest Mahad. He watched Seto’s head list to the side as his breathing eventually evened out, and his body stilled, tangled up in his blankets.

Once he was sure that the terrors were gone, Set turned to the watch sitting beside the phone on the bedside table to check the time. The sun would soon be up. There wasn’t enough night left for Seto to recoup enough rest, and he had planned to spend the day with Hermione. Knowing that, Seto would be up at his usual early time. There would be no resting in bed through the morning.

He sighed and disappeared back into the Rod.

Seto was up not two hours later, and for the first time, Set did not put up a fight about him leaving the Rod behind with Yugi.

* * *

The arrival of spring at Hogwarts didn’t mean much more than a turn of a calendar page. The bitter winter left the ground frozen long after the last snowfall had stopped and the sun didn’t do nearly enough to warm the ground and melt it away.

The Hogwarts grounds then became coated in small trails from commonly-used paths. One led right from the castle steps to the Greenhouses, another to Hagrid’s Hut, where Care of Magical Creatures was generally located, weather permitting. Another, less commonly used, went from the traditional path from the gates right up to the castle steps, and was traveled solely by the patrolling Aurors as they came and left. Everywhere else was still a mess from the near record-setting levels of snow and ice that fell in the last months that hadn’t yet vanished with the switch of the season.

With the Hogsmeade visits still cancelled, and with everyone completely shut in for the majority of the wintertime, it made finding places to be alone all that much harder. The unused classrooms were their usual go-to when doing schoolwork, and the Room of Requirement had been sealed shut the last few weekends, igniting Harry’s suspicions that Malfoy was up to something in there, despite all of his attempts to find out what ending in utter failure. But she didn’t want to go to any of those places – they were  _always_ there.

Hermione had been looking forward to this weekend for quite some time. It was the Saturday immediately following the spring midterm exams, and it would be a nice breather from living in the library nonstop for the last two weeks. She hadn’t even seen Seto, for Kaiba Corp had to send him a virtual headset prototype to test, which first had to make it past Auror inspection, then had to be magicked to work inside school grounds, and  _then_ was able to be tested before he sent it back with what she could only describe as a novel of notes to go with it.

Sufficed to say, it was clear that he didn’t get any sleep for the past week, and it was nothing short of a miracle that he didn’t have dark circles around his eyes from balancing exams and his job at the same time.

Her mood had dampened somewhat when she made her way down the girls’ staircase that morning. Seto was sitting by the fireplace, a book open in his hands, but she could tell he wasn’t reading, his mind clearly elsewhere. Was he having a conversation with Set? She couldn’t see the Millennium Rod anywhere, but Seto had gotten very good at hiding it from view.

Seto had glanced up when she approached, offered something resembling a sort-of-smirk, and got up, reaching for his coat that sat draped over the back of the seat next to him.

Hermione blinked. “Are we going somewhere?”

Seto had shrugged, and also grabbed the two travel mugs from the table. “A walk.”

His voice was short, clipped, and Hermione frowned. Something was clearly bothering him.

“Alright…” she said slowly, and turned to go back upstairs. “I’ll get my coat then…”

It wasn’t until they had passed through the front doors and down the main steps of the castle that she had to wonder where he was taking her – especially when he ditched the manmade paths and started crunching his way through the snow.

“We’re not going to Hogsmeade?” It wasn’t as much a question but a stating of the obvious.  

She barely caught his quiet chuckle. “No. There’s no special permission to get  _that_ far away this time.”

He led her past Hagrid’s Hut, but away from the edge of the Forbidden Forest and the Quidditch Pitch, and more towards the lake.

Hermione snuck a peek behind her. The castle, while obviously still in sight, was a good ways off. As far as finding someplace secluded to spend their time, this was probably it.

“This is different,” she said, as he helped her up onto one of the larger rocks by the water’s edge.

“It’s quiet,” said Seto. He chose a dry, sunny area to sit down and gazed out at the calm waters of the Black Lake.

Hermione frowned and bit her lip. This was the most standoffish he has ever been to her. Was it just from the rough week – or two – that fell over the entire school? Was he just tired? …Or – had  _she_ done something inadvertently to him?

The thought was slashed from her mind as quick as it had come. Seto wasn’t one to hold back if he was angry with someone. If she had done something stupid, he would have said so.

“It  _is_ peaceful out here,” she said, “I’m happy to get out, don’t get me wrong.” She reached for her wand and conjured her signature blue flame-in-a-jar and set it between them on the boulder. “It’s still winter though.”

“Spring, technically,” said Seto.

“Whatever,” she said, with a flippant wave of her hand. “It’s still cold, and we just trudged through the snow to get here. Feels like winter.”

“Better get used to it,” said Seto, “We’re supposed to get another storm in the next few days.”

Hermione raised an eyebrow. “And you know that how?”

Seto smirked – the first  _genuine_ smirk of the day – and pulled his phone from his coat pocket. He fiddled with it a moment, before passing it to her, showing a Muggle storm report. “With all your magic, you would think wizards would have figured out how to report the weather accurately in your newspapers.”

“ _No one_ can accurately report the weather,” said Hermione, “Even the Muggles, with all the advancements in technology, don’t always get it right.”

“Are you saying you believe  _The Daily Prophet_?”

Hermione shook her head. “No…but your app isn’t always right on the mark either.”

“I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see who’s right and who’s wrong,” said Seto, pocketing his phone again.

“I suppose so.”

He didn’t say anything after that, just kept his eyes on the water. His right arm was draped over his leg, and she watched the hand curl in and out of a fist ever other minute or so.

This wasn’t normal. Seto was acting more or less the same to when she first met him at the Burrow. He was aloof then, choosing to be off by himself and work or study the mountain of books he had picked up from Diagon Alley. It was a miracle that he agreed to let her study  _near_ him when he was outside, giving off the barest minimum of being social with the others.

Did he want her to leave? If he truly wanted to be off by himself, he wouldn’t have waited for her to come downstairs this morning, and he certainly would have said as much when she went to get her coat to join him. Today would have been nothing more than a day of playing one-sided hide-and-seek, and he would have won by a landslide.

Was this out of some sense of obligation because they planned to spend time together today? Was he forcing this on himself, and really wanted nothing more than to spend the day in a quiet corner of the castle?

She sighed – his silence was killing her.

“What’s wrong?” she said, breaking the awkward silence between them.

“Nothing,” he said, a bit too quickly, and she bit back a harsh laugh. There was no plainer lie.

“Right, and my name is Rita Skeeter. You’ve been off since we left the tower.”

Seto closed his eyes for a good five seconds before looking back out again – at the water,  _not_ at her. “It’s nothing.”

She had to fight the urge to roll her eyes. Instead, she reached for his hand, and felt her heart twist into a knot when he tensed up, and tried to flinch out of her light grasp before he seemed to check himself and stopped. Hermione was used to it – she knew that he did this whenever someone touched him. He practically locked up his whole right side when McLaggen tried to get under his skin a few weeks ago. It was something she never asked to why it happened, but just accepted as something that stemmed from his youth, and inquiring about it felt like probing where she shouldn’t be. But…knowing that he still did it to  _her_ after all this time  _hurt_.

“Clearly, it isn’t,” she said, “If there’s something I’ve done to make you this way, I wish you’d –”

“— You haven’t done anything.”

Well,  _that_ was a relief.

“I –” Seto sighed and looked down at her hand hovering,  _barely touching_ his arm. “It’s  _complicated.”_

Hermione tilted her head, regarding him curiously. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

Seto turned to look ahead again. “Doubtful.”

Hermione frowned. “You’re doing a Harry.”

Seto snorted.

Hermione huffed. “ _You are_. Don’t hold whatever it is inside all the time. Talk to me.” She watched his shoulders sag as his eyes closed again, and her voice softened. “It’s alright. I’m not going anywhere. You don’t have to say anything now if you don’t want to – but you will feel better once you do.”

There was the  _barest_ of nods, but he didn’t say anything after that, choosing to keep his gaze out over the water.

Hermione sighed quietly, leaned her head onto his shoulder and took his hand in hers, relieved that this time, he didn’t freeze up or shake her back off. She rubbed her thumb along the back of his hand over the spot where Umbridge’s two nights of detention had sliced ‘ _I will show respect’_ into his skin, though the lines were long gone now. Two nights hadn’t been long enough to permanently scar him, unlike Harry, who had ‘ _I will not tell lies’_ etched in for weeks throughout his fifth year.

She wasn’t sure how long they sat in complete silence, and she was sure she had dozed off for some of the time, but his sudden question nearly made her jump.

“Why?”

She lifted her head. “Why what?”

Seto’s brow was furrowed. Gears were turning in his head, she was sure of it, and he looked to be struggling to find the right words to say.

“Why – why  _me_?” he finally asked, looking down at her. She was staring at him, not entirely comprehending the simple question, so he rephrased. “What is it you see in me?”

Hermione gave him a funny look. “W-what is  _that_ supposed to mean?”

Seto looked up at the sky and sighed. “Not counting one pompous idiot, you could probably have whoever you wanted in this place –”

Hermione snorted. “Right – a plain, know-it-all bookworm is such pleasant company.”

Seto turned to look at her. She was far more than  _plain_. “You and Ron had something going back and forth for a while – and don’t deny it to me, astronauts in orbit could have seen it for how obvious it was.”

Hermione flushed.

“Yet…you choose  _me_. I…” Seto sounded resigned. “I just don’t get it.”

Hermione patted his hand gently. “I think…” she began, “This is the sort of conversation to have  _before_ we started dating.”

Seto gave a lone silent chuckle and gestured out at the landscape. “Is that what this is?”

Hermione snorted. “It’s the closest we’ll get to one outside of Hogsmeade, so yes.”

She was silent for a minute as she gathered her thoughts. “You’re right, in a way. Harry and Ron – my friends are everything. I don’t know if I would still be here without them.”

Hermione paused. “Actually, I  _wouldn’t_ be here without them. I’d be dead, probably. But one mountain troll aside, I’d probably be more like you. Spending my time all alone with my nose in a book, ignoring everyone around me, and forgetting to  _live_.”

She rested her head on his shoulder again. “Harry is like the brother I’ve never had. And Ron too – though I’ll admit I did fancy him for a while. In a way, I still do. But Ron…I know he tries his best at times, but he’s a bit too oblivious with people’s feelings. And whether he’s meant it or not, he’s hurt me one too many times. We’ve both done it to each other, I’ll admit it. I’m not perfect.

“…But Ron doesn’t see the world the way you and I do. This place, _magic_ , it’s all he’s ever known, and there’s so much he takes for granted. His heart, oh it’s so much bigger than mine, but it’s so hard to talk about things that interest  _me._ He just accepts so much as it is because a world of magic is all he’s ever known.”

She hugged his arm a little tighter. “I’m attracted to you because you’re  _different_. You come from the same world I do. I know your life is so much more hectic than mine, but it’s just so  _refreshing_ to know there’s someone I can talk to about things that interest me. We can talk about theories of magic, or bounce essay points off each other, or just  _study_ in silence without wondering when someone is going to throw their book aside, complain about their work, and try and start up a game of Gobstones instead.

“We don’t share the  _exact_ interests, but you don’t belittle mine.” She sniffed. “Do you have any idea how shocked, how  _surprised_  I was to find that you were actually  _giving_ Dobby the extra little socks and hats that I was making that he didn’t find? Harry understood – sort of – what I was trying with SPEW. He grew up in a Muggle environment too. But everyone else here just accepts things as the way they are and have no intention in making the world better.”

“It was payment for the coffee.”

“Exactly!” she cried, pushing herself off of him and gesturing wildly. “You acknowledge that the house elves are performing a service and choose to give them something back, not treat them like slaves for the wizards! That’s what I want – to do some good when this is all over, but I can’t talk about that, or Arithmancy or…Ancient Runes with anyone – well, Yugi I can, and Ryou too, but that’s beside the point now. With Harry and Ron, if it isn’t chess, it’s Quidditch. …I just can’t relate to them like I can with you.”

“Hm.” He said after a few beats of silence, but that was it.

Hermione eyed him curiously. “What, did you think me so shallow that I was just here for your fame?”

There was another odd beat. “I had to be sure.” But judging by the tone of his voice, that wasn’t really the reason why he had asked.

“Sure of what – that I wasn’t just another obsessed Muggleborn like a third of the school?”

He didn’t really answer her.

Seto sighed. Today was not quite going as planned. Though, after running the gauntlet of nightmares last night, he didn’t plan for a whole lot. He had dreamt of various “bad endings” to bits of his life before, most of them resulting in either his or Mokuba’s death by someone’s hands. He was used to them by now, but it didn’t make seeing them again any less unsettling.

But this was the first that Hermione had wormed her way into them, alongside the round of villains he had faced in the past. And when he woke, not long after watching her second death of the evening – that one by the Shadow’s clawed hands – it left him visibly shaken. The last vision before they all seemed to filter away had felt so real that he was certain the Shadow had actually snuck its way into his head after weeks of staying away. But it hadn’t, and the dream faded away like all the others.

Frowning, Hermione shifted away from him and twisted around on the boulder so she could face him properly. “Talk to me,  _please_?”she said, and she didn’t care how desperate that sounded. “What’s wrong?”

“I…” he began, and then stopped. His words were failing him today. “You’d probably be happier with someone else.”

He could see a few different reactions cross her face, but before she could say anything, he continued. “I-I’m not an easy person to get along with. You  _know_ that. Dating? I’ve barely worked past friends on the social scale, and even then, there’s maybe only two people I’d lump in there. You think Ron’s heart is an emotional mess? At least he displays something more than cold indifference on a regular basis.”

Hermione straightened up, eyes wide. “…Are you saying we shouldn’t be together because you’re…what? Reserved? It can’t be because you’re incapable of showing affection because that’s the biggest lie I’ve ever heard. You don’t have to be like Cormac McLaggen or Lavender Brown – snogging someone’s face off every day or showing off that you’ve got a trophy date to be capable of feeling, Seto. You’ve done more by small, special moments than so many people have done for me from the past six years.”

Seto raised an eyebrow, looking doubtful.

“Alright, I’ll give you proof,” said Hermione, and tallied off on her fingers. “Despite usually wanting nothing to do with any of us, you allowed me to sit and study with you both over the summer, and while you jumped around from room to room in the castle. Even without saying anything, you’ve listened to me vent over just about anything and have not retorted with any sort of judged opinion on ‘that’s just how the world works, Hermione’. You’ve allowed me to  _help_ you in your defensive lessons, and it’s worked….”

“ _That_ barely counts. You were keeping me from murdering a dead spirit – who by all accounts shouldn’t have tried to use you as Shadow Realm bait in the first place.”

“ _No_ , Set was looking out for your best interest. I merely reminded you of how much of an idiot you were being by refusing help when you needed it most.”

He started to retort again but she silenced him with a dark look. “And you’re being one now too, so stop and let me finish.”

“…Despite not wanting  _anything_ to do with Umbridge’s Christmas Ball, you went anyway, and regardless of how you believe it happened, you  _saved me_ from Cormac McLaggen and we both had a lovely night on the Astronomy Tower. And you can’t tell me that the kiss –  _both of them –_ right outside the portrait hole were just pecks under mistletoe at Christmas. We were both scarlet afterwards.

“You’re a friend who’s given me a voice when I couldn’t find mine, a companion when I didn’t want to be alone, and a means of escape when I needed it most. They’re not things you give solely to someone you love, but you don’t even offer those to anyone else – not even Yugi or Ryou, who you’ve known longer than  _any_  of us.”

She scooted closer again and took hold of his hand. “I don’t  _want_ you to turn into something like Ron or Cormac, and I wouldn’t want us to be like Ron and Lavender. That’s not who we are. You’re worried about unknowns, because that’s what this relationship is to you. I’ve never been in one either, so this is new to me too. The important thing is that we be willing to tread through this together.”

Seto hung his head and stared at his hands again. “I’ve been…we’ll call it  _engrained_  to believe that love –  _showing emotions_  – was a sign of weakness. If it was something that could be exploited,  _it would be_. I had to close myself off for so long, I don’t think I can open up – not the way you’d want me to.”

Hermione wrinkled her nose. “What sort of rhetoric is that?”

Seto let out a dark laugh. “Part of Gozaburo’s doctrine. It was true though. I’ve had two weaknesses since taking over Kaiba Corp. The company and my brother, and since taking Kaiba Corp, I’ve nearly lost it twice, actually three times, and Mokuba’s faced more traumas on my account than any ten year-old should ever have faced.”

He looked her dead in the eyes. “I can’t let that happen to you too.”

Hermione’s head tilted to the side as she shook it slightly. “What did I tell you about being an idiot?”

Seto blinked. Well –  _that_ wasn’t the response he was expecting.

“What are you worried over – that someone is going to use me as barter?”

“Look where I ended up at the end of Christmas break!” Seto countered, eyes narrowing, “I  _know_ you remember what happened to me during that time. How much worse would it have been had Mokuba – or  _you –_ gotten involved? Or if they knew about us?”

She threw her hands in the air, exasperated. “Newsflash, Seto, my best friend is Harry Potter. We’re already in a war, and it’s only going to get worse. I’m sure I’ll already have a huge target on my back not just for being Muggleborn, but for being close to Harry! What’s going to happen after we graduate Hogwarts next year if the war is still going on? No place is going to be safe, but we’re going to keep on fighting.”

“You  _know_ what Voldemort wants. The Shadow throws everything in a lurch. I only narrowly got away the last time. It invades my mind like a parasite and I can’t stop it. Set can’t stop it. The  _Pharaoh_ can’t either. What’s to say it won’t take a glimpse through Memory Lane, and then attack  _you_ next to draw me back?”

Hermione shook her head; he truly is just like Harry. “You can’t live in fear of the unknown, Seto. Look at you – you plan for everything. Didn’t Yugi once say you had three different back-up plans in your own card deck?”

The corner of Seto’s lip curled up,  _ever so slightly_. “Five, but who’s counting.”

“Exactly! We don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, or next week, or even ten minutes from now. But we can only plan ahead as best we can. The notion of Voldemort winning the war frightens me, and knowing what this Shadow is capable of terrifies me, but that’s not enough to push me away. I’m not going anywhere.”

Seto sighed.

“I’m not a frail little girl, Seto. I can take care of myself,” she said, looking slightly amused now, and leaned up next to him again. “I don’t know why I have to keep telling you that.”

Seto relaxed somewhat. “Maybe I just needed to hear it again.”

Hermione swatted his arm. “For someone with such good memory, you seem to forget that a lot.”

“Consider it one of my failings.”

“Mmm,” she muttered and looped her arm back around his.

They sat back, staring out at the calm waters before Hermione spoke up again. “Do you feel a little better now? About us?”

To her surprise, he chuckled. “I know that if I bring any of this up again, you’re going to hex me into the bottom of the Black Lake.”

“Mmm, no. I’m not sharing you with the mermaids. They’re too clingy.”

“There are mermaids in the Black Lake?” Seto rolled his eyes. “Why does that not surprise me?”

She giggled. “But in all seriousness, I don’t want you to bottle all this in. I’m here to help. I know old habits are hard to break, but at least promise to  _try_ not to push me away like this again?”

He looked down at her. “I think I can handle that.”

She smiled and raised her head up. Their faces were inches apart.

“ _Hem, hem_.”

Hermione jumped, startled, and knocked her head right into Seto with a quiet “oh!”

Seto rubbed at the bridge of his nose as they turned to the side. Professor Umbridge was standing at the base of the boulder, her hands on her hips.

“What are you two doing?”

“Just…enjoying the weather,” said Hermione, “After this last week of exams, it’s peaceful to just sit out here in the sun.”

“It  _was_ peaceful out here,” Seto muttered.

Hermione punched his arm.

“A concerned student alerted me that you two were leaving school grounds unattended,” said Umbridge suspiciously, “Have you been here the entire time?”

Hermione blinked. “Yes,” she said, “We haven’t gone near the gates at all.”

“Hm,” said Umbridge. Her voice was laced with doubt. “In any case, come. Down off that rock before you hurt yourselves up there. We’re going back to the castle.”

Hermione’s shoulders slumped. “Please, Professor, must we?”

“Absolutely,” said Umbridge with a wicked grin, “Why, Mr. Kaiba has missed  _enough_ lessons this year. If you stay out any longer in this cold, you’re likely to put him back in the hospital. And we can’t have  _that_ , can we?”

“It’s not  _that_ cold out here,” Seto countered. “I’m not about to get sick from sitting in the sun.”

“Regardless, it is a safety concern if you’re missing for too long,” said Umbridge, gesturing out towards the lake. “I know you are not in-the-know with everything that goes on in the Ministry, but the creatures in the Black Lake have been stirring closer to the surface over the past few years. You two are right along the water’s edge. We wouldn’t want any of those  _merpeople_  or grindylows to drag you down, now would we?”

“That sounds made up,” Seto said flatly. “Grindylow live at the bottom of lakes, not near the surface.”

“Not that you would have known, seeing you have been in our world for only a few short months, Mr. Kaiba,” said Umbridge hotly, “But there have been reports of Grindylow dragging children to the bottom of bodies of water. Rita Skeeter has done a number of reports about the incidents and the species in general.”

“Oh, if Rita Skeeter published it, than it  _must_ be true,” Hermione deadpanned, eye rolling.

Umbridge sneered. “Rita Skeeter is a  _renowned journalist_ , Miss Granger. Now come along.”

Seto shook his head slightly, but leapt off the boulder, landing easily on his feet. Umbridge turned back and started back up the path as he helped Hermione down and grabbed their travel mugs.

When she didn’t hear them crunching along behind her, Umbridge looked back. “ _This_ way, you two. The castle is back  _this_ way.”

“We’re finishing our walk,” Seto snapped. “We’re not in danger of the  _dastardly grindylows_ anymore, and there’s no rule saying we’re shut inside on the weekends. But if you’re so sure that something is going to jump out of the lake or run out of the forest and attack us, then by all means, come along. I’m sure your expertise in defensive magic will be plenty to ward off the dangerous creatures lurking out of sight.”

And with that, he turned on his heel, looped his arm around Hermione’s and started off a different path.

“You are going to get yourself detention again if you’re not careful,” Hermione muttered.

Seto turned his head ever so slightly to peer behind him. “She’s already heading back to the castle, and I’ll bet anything, she’s babbling nonsense and her face is the same shade as a tomato.”

Hermione shook her head. “I swear she’s been watching us lately.”

“You know it was probably McLaggen that tipped her off.”

She shrugged. “Probably. But I think she’s been looking for a reason get back at me from last year.”

“Why?” Seto raised his mug to his lips and took a sip of his coffee. “What did you do?”

Hermione cringed. “Well…aside from helping to start Harry’s illegal  defense club? I led her into the forest and nearly got her killed – or at least  _severely hurt_  – by Hagrid’s half-brother and a herd of centaurs.”

Seto nearly choked on his drink.

“Oh, sorry!” she said, patting his back until the coughing stopped. “It’s true though. She hates anything that’s considered a half-breed. And we needed to get to the Department of Mysteries, so Harry and I led her into the forest.”

Seto snorted. “What, were you hoping something in there would take her out?”

“Sort of? I was improvising the entire time and –stop laughing!”

Seto recovered himself. “That’s terrible – I love it. Look at you breaking the rules.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” she said.

Seto stopped walking and slowly turned to look at her. “What  _else_ have you been holding out on me?”

“I mean,” Hermione shrugged. “I’m friends with Harry. We broke a hundred school rules almost every year.”

“No no,” Seto shook his head. “Not you as a collective. What have  _you_ done?”

“Oh.” Hermione thought back as they started walking again, passing across the path leading to the Quidditch Pitch and around towards the Whomping Willow. “I once set Professor Snape’s robes on fire….”

“You didn’t think to do it to Umbridge’s?”

“It was my first year,” said Hermione, “And it was during a Quidditch game. We thought Snape was trying to curse Harry off his broom at the time.”

“Huh.”

“Thinking back, it’s hard to imagine just how many hijinks we got up to each year.”

“You’ll have to tell me sometime.” Seto paused and turned to look back in the direction of the lake. “…Starting with how you know mermaids are clingy.”

“Oh,” Hermione laughed as they continued onward. “Do you remember my telling you of the TriWizard Tournament in our fourth year? Well, one of the tasks involved the Black Lake….”


	6. Exam Prep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One of them is trying to study. The other is a distraction. 
> 
> It doesn't help that they're already dating.

During rounds, Hermione had found a little alcove in the wall on the third floor of the East Tower. Not enough to be completely hidden from sight if someone walked by, but it was tucked away in enough of a corner that the odds of being found were fairly slim.

The bonus? It was large enough to charm some cushions onto the sort-of-bench at the bottom to make it more comfortable.

And  _that_ was where she found herself and Seto studying for their Arithmancy exam, not the overcrowded library or common room, and definitely not one of the drafty empty classrooms. The two large torches on either side of the alcove provided enough light and warmth that neither of them needed to search out a fireplace or create a blue flame-in-a-jar to keep from freezing.

Well –  _she_ was studying for her Arithmancy exam at least. Seto had taken a chunk of Transfiguration books out of the library and was flipping through them with the same look of determination on his face that he had when he was trying to fix his cellphone at the beginning of the year.

They sat on each end of the alcove seat, angled in and facing each other. Hermione drew her knees up to balance her book on, and had her feet on the middle of the bench, and every so often looked over the top of the page to see Seto idly flip through the pages of his own book.

How his eyes could scan the text on the page so quickly and then retain the information was beyond her, but watching him was mesmerizing.

Hermione had to almost force herself to return to her textbook. Seto was so completely absorbed in his hunt through the Transfiguration books that he didn’t catch her staring. Which was fine; she was certain her cheeks were flushed.

After a while, she heard the familiar fluttering of wings and she looked up – not at him, but towards the ceiling – to see the familiar cluster of small canaries circling above their heads.

“The bird conjuring charm?” she said curiously.  _He_ was the one that mastered that spell in class first, and even helped her with her own casting. Why was he practicing it now?

“I’m experimenting,” he said, without looking up, and reached for one of the tomes he had tossed onto the bench, beside her feet.

“With what?”

When he didn’t answer, she shrugged and went back to her book. He was clearly hyper-focused in his task. If only she could stay so equally enthralled with her lecture notes.

Every few minutes of him waving his wand, the birds would vanish. He’d consult the books, summon another few birds, practice some other spell nonverbally, and then clear them out and start fresh. He moved his wand with clean precision, without hesitation. Unlike some of her other peers, there were no shaky arcs or mispronounced incantations. Perfect casting.

Eventually, a panicked chirp sounded from above and Hermione nearly jumped a foot in the air as one of the canaries landed dead center on her book and disappeared on contact, leaving a few fluttering feathers behind.

“ _What the –?!”_

She glared at him. He was smirking, his wand aimed upwards. The other birds had vanished as well.

Seto leaned over and brushed the stray feathers off of her book. “Sorry.”

He didn’t sound sorry at all.

“ _What are you doing to those poor birds_?”

He shrugged. “Using  _Avis_  as a guide, I’m trying to either conjure something  _other_ than the birds, or transfigure them into something else.”

“You nearly gave me a heart attack,” she said. “What are you trying to summon instead?”

“Dragons.”

Hermione’s shoulders slumped and she gave him a pointed look. “ _Why?_ ”

Seto raised an eyebrow. “Why not?”

She couldn’t help but chuckle lightly.  _Of course_ he would go for tiny little dragons. “Well…just watch where you aim those poor things. I  _am_ trying to study for our exam tomorrow.”

“Not very well by the looks of it.”

Hermione rolled her eyes. “Says the person who’s  _not even_ studying, and doesn’t even have his book out.”

“Says the person who spent more time watching  _me_  than focusing on review.”

 _Damn_ , she couldn’t help but blush, and he smirked triumphantly at her in response.  _He did notice_.

“Well…” she said lamely, well aware of how red her face must be (and by the rather amused look on Seto’s face, he was enjoying this far too much), and she looked down at her notes again. “It’s not  _my_ fault that you’re too distracting.”

Seto’s laughter was light, unlike the usual sarcastic cackle that sometimes made its way out while he dueled. “Is  _that_ what you’re going with?”

“Yes,” she said fiercely, and made a point to not look up at him this time. “The birds were noisy.”

Seto smirked again. “You weren’t watching the birds.”

Not that it had a chance to get back to its normal color, but she felt her face redden further, and she slumped down further against the seat until she was  _almost_ laying on her back, hiding her face behind the book propped against her legs.

“…They were still distracting.”

Seto leaned over slightly to see her face from over the top of her knees. “That still wasn’t what kept your interest.”

“Ugh,” Hermione groaned, and laid her book overtop her face to hide it from view. “Alright, I was watching you cast the spells. Your form is beautiful to watch, and I couldn’t help myself.”

The book was suddenly plucked away. Seto was much closer now, leaning almost directly over her. “Ah,” he said, a sly grin on his face. “ _That’s_ what it was?”

Without trying to sit back up, she flailed her hand out desperately to grab her book back and cover her face – that had to be  _all_ shades of red at this point – but he held it out of her reach, smirking.

“Why do you want this back?” he said, dangling it  _just_ out of her way. “It’s not like you actually got any studying done with it.”

Hermione glared at him, though he didn’t seem affected by it. Not to the King of Icy Death Stares. She started to try and right herself and make another grab for the book but he held it up, higher.

A new strategy was needed.

“I feel so enlightened,” Seto said, teasingly, “You’re into me for the wand-work,  _and nothing else_. And here I thought all the girls liked me only for my good looks.”

“Oh shut up,” she laughed, grabbing him by the knot of his tie with one hand and yanking down, and reaching for her book with the other. The move knocked Seto completely off balance, and he landed almost right on top of her, their legs tangled up along the seat. He dropped the book in favor of bracing his arms against the cushion on either sides of her, rather than crush her outright.

Their faces were inches apart, and Hermione grinned smugly at the red tinge spreading across his face. With one hand on his tie still, keeping him from getting back up, she wrapped her other around the back of his neck, lifted her head and kissed him.

Seto chuckled when she broke away, unable to keep her head angled up from her awkward slump. “Was that admitting my point?”

Hermione shook her head slightly and brushed her fingers against the hair along the back of his head. “I’m smitten for a great number of things,” she said, staring into his eyes. “We had this conversation before. But being handsome is a bonus.”

She let go of his tie and pressed her hands against his chest to try and push him up and off of her, but he didn’t budge. “Umbridge is going to find us here…and we’re never going to be able to explain this.”

Seto was smirking again. “What makes you think anyone is going to find us in this corner of the castle?”

Hermione rolled her eyes. “Because  _every time_ we get to be alone somewhere,  _someone_ always breaks the mood. And you know that witch will give us both detentions out of spite.”

Seto raised an eyebrow, “For  _what_? Being happy?”

Hermione nodded. “You know she passed a decree last year saying boys and girls had to be at least six inches from each other.”

Seto frowned, judged the distance between them before the corner of his lip curled upwards again. “You know…we are a bit close.” He adjusted his arms, lowering himself down slightly against an elbow as he cupped the back of her head with his hand. “How’s that?”

Hermione shook her head slightly, trying not to laugh. “You are terrible. We are going to get in such trouble. Now where’s my book?”

Seto shrugged. “Somewhere around here. You don’t need it.”

“I do need it. I have studying to do!”

“You did just fine without it.”

Hermione pursed her lips. Reviewing for her exam hadn’t gone anywhere…but Arithmancy hadn’t been her only focus this night. And there was no way she was going to get back to her test prep while sitting here with him, so it might as well be forgotten. “You know…” she said, after a beat. “You’re right. But what about you? Don’t you want to…finish trying to turn a poor canary into a dragon?”

Seto shrugged. “I have time to figure that out. But I don’t think you finished what you  _were_ studying.”

Hermione giggled and murmured in agreement. “Mmmm.” She raised a hand to his face and tapped at his lower lip. “I think I need to look at this a little more closely.”

Seto repositioned his arm and lowered his head back towards hers again. “Absolutely. Can’t have you fail that exam, can we?”

She laughed as their lips locked together again.


	7. Hospital Visit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After an accident, Hermione visits Seto in the Hospital Wing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a tumblr prompt done some time ago, and I never bothered to post it here. Whoops!

Hermione was the last of their group to come down the dormitory steps that morning, and to Harry’s surprise, she had her bag slung over her shoulder.

Ryou raised an eyebrow. “Spending the day in the Library?”

Hermione shook her head, and it was then that Yugi noticed the once-pristine silver device in her hand, and he tried to keep his face neutral. A large crack ran through the back piece, and the screen was partially shattered, with bits of the top glass missing. Clearly, her attempts to fix Seto’s phone had gone unsuccessful.

Ron frowned sadly. “Um…are you  _sure_ you don’t want to come with us to Hogsmeade? It might…take your mind off things?”

Hermione shook her head again and moved to the portrait hole. “I’m sure.  You guys have fun, I’ll see you at dinner.”

“Want us to bring you anything?” asked Yugi.

“No, but thank you,” said Hermione, “I’m alright.”

Harry nodded. “Give him our regards?”

Hermione smiled slightly and exited the tower. Most of the corridors were empty, but there were echoes of activity the closer she got to the ground floors as most of the school began to gather for the Hogsmeade trip.

Instead of joining them, she cut down a fourth floor corridor and continued towards the open doorway leading into the Hospital Wing.

Seto was asleep on the farthest bed from the door, his hair barely visible under the thick bandages wrapped around his head like a skullcap. Set hovered nearby, barely visible through the rays of sunlight streaming in through the windows.

Hermione couldn’t see the Millennium Rod anywhere as she made her way across the room, but it had to be somewhere nearby for Set to be spirited out, and guessed it was resting in Seto’s right hand, hidden away from view under the blankets.

She dropped her bag lightly to the floor and took a seat at Seto’s left side, reached forward, and took his left hand in hers.

Set shook his head. “He’s double-drugged right now.”

Hermione’s head shot up. “What are you talking about?”

Set pointed to the potion bottles on the bedside table. “Your school healer gave him those. I wouldn’t trust anything that came in a bottle shaped like a skeleton, but it was supposed to help. And from what I understand, the other is to help him sleep through it.”

Hermione glanced over. “Hm. I can see why. I’ve heard Skele-Gro is painful, and can take a while to work, depending on how much damage there was. Harry had to regrow all of the bones in his arm overnight once.”

Set bristled. “Well – he’s not  _missing_ any, they’re just broken. I am more so surprised that he was as lucky. The fall could have killed him. Our  _Millennium Rod_ could have too, if it landed under him differently.”

Hermione sighed and rubbed her thumb along the back of his hand.

Set glanced over. Hermione was trying to hide the worry on her face as she watched the slow rise and fall of his chest, with the occasional twitch in his features, probably a reaction to the Skele-Gro doing its work.

He gave a slight bow. “I’ll…leave you two alone.”

Hermione half-smiled as the Rod flared from under the bedcovers, and Set disappeared. She continued to watch him sleep for another minute before reaching into her sweater pocket and pulling out the damaged cell phone.

“I’m sorry,” she said to him, “If I had  _any_ idea that Harry’s practice was going to get overrun by Cormac’s need to be Quidditch Superstar, I wouldn’t have chosen to sit so close.”

She paused. “Actually, knowing how we both feel about Cormac McLaggen, I probably wouldn’t have said we’d go. We could have sat by the Lake, or that tree across from the courtyard – you know, the one where we finished Professor Sprout’s essay right when it started to rain that one time and we ended up soaked – and this mess would have been avoided.”

If he was able to hear her, he didn’t make any indication of it.

Hermione looked down at the phone in her lap. “I don’t know exactly what you did to this thing, but I can’t fix it. Yugi offered to find all of your notes – the ones you made when you were trying to get everything working – but I didn’t want him to snoop through your things. It’s probably something simple that I’ve overlooked.” She cringed at the gaping hole in the screen. “Or…it’s just damaged beyond repair. But I’m sure when you’re up and at it again, you’ll have it fixed up in no time. And then you’ll tell me what it is and I’ll feel silly for not thinking of it.”

She set it on the table next to the Skele-Gro.

“Today is the Hogsmeade trip,” she said next as he shifted slightly, a grimace forming on his face before his features slackened out again. “They tried to get me to go with them, to get my mind off things, but I couldn’t. I mean – you’re still here, me being in or out of the castle wouldn’t have changed that. I’m still going to worry. But I know they were just trying to help.”

She sighed. “You probably wouldn’t have gone either, if you were able. You always did prefer the castle when it was empty and quiet. But I know you would have told me to go, and get off the grounds for a while, and have fun…but I can’t. You’re so much more important than a routine field trip.”

Hermione reached into her bag and pulled out her Arithmancy book. “Since I was up here for the rest of yesterday, Ginny filled me in on what happened after we rushed you in…and you’re going to love this….

“Someone – Ginny, most likely, from the way she was telling the story – told Professor McGonagall that there was an accident on the Pitch, and she was  _furious._ I mean, we weren’t watching every bit that was going on while in the stands. They weren’t even doing drills when this happened, and I honestly thought one of our beaters just had terrible aim, but no, that’s not what occurred at all.”

Hermione clasped both her hands around his again, and balanced her textbook in her lap. “Apparently Cormac wasn’t too interested in the team huddle Harry was trying to have, and proceeded to show the beaters just how well they’re supposed to hit the Bludger. So when the balls were released again, Cormac took one of their bats and  _slammed_ it, though his aim wasn’t too great either, and the other beater had to knock it out of the way so  _he_ wouldn’t get hit…and I’m sure you’re painfully aware of where it went flying.

“Professor McGonagall though wasn’t angry with the beaters or with Harry for not being able to manage the team. Jimmy Peakes was beside himself that his hit on the Bludger did this to you, and he was certain he would end up in loads of trouble. They had to get him some sort of calming drought before he gave himself a panic attack. Meanwhile, Cormac was dropped from the upcoming game against Slytherin, he received some sort of detention, and his Hogsmeade privileges were revoked…which, seeing as this is probably the last trip of the year, isn’t saying all that much.

“He tried to chalk it up as an accident, which it  _was_ if we’re being technical, but Professor McGonagall  _reamed him out_. He’s a relief  _Keeper_ , not Beater. He shouldn’t have had that bat in the first place.”

She adjusted her position in the uncomfortable visitor chair. “They were surprised – with how loud Professor McGonagall was yelling in her office, that Umbridge didn’t waddle in and investigate. Though, even if she did, Professor McGonagall probably would have scared her off.”

Hermione shrugged. “It’s not like Umbridge would have disciplined him any. Cormac’s uncle or cousin…or whoever…is some top official in his department at the Ministry. The two are probably chums. Doesn’t matter though – turns out she’s left for the weekend.”

“But he’s lucky that  _I_ haven’t found him,” said Hermione stiffly, “Because he’d probably end up in here with you, and I don’t think I could sit here with you while resisting the urge to hex him, even while he’s down.” She paused. “And I don’t care how petty that sounded.”

She gave a quick glance back to where Madam Pomfrey’s office was located. “I know we were supposed to go over Arithmancy notes for our exam tomorrow, but the way this weekend went, I don’t think you’re going to make it. So…I’m still going to be here, but just going over our materials. I’d read the chapter out to you, but I don’t think Madame Pomfrey would appreciate it too much. She’ll want you to get your sleep, and think I’m distracting you or whatever. But it’s fine. You’ve probably memorized all this content anyway.”

Hermione patted his hand gently before settling back in her chair and opened the Arithmancy book.

Seto grimaced and shifted again.

* * *

  _Some time later…_

There was a gentle nudge at her shoulder.

“Hermione? Hermione, wake up!”

She blinked her eyes open, and lifted her head from where she had rested it awkwardly against Seto’s side, and sat back up in her chair, hiding the wince from being in such an uncomfortable position for so long. The Arithmancy book had fallen from her lap onto the floor some time ago.

Rubbing the last bit of her unexpected nap from her eyes, Hermione looked up. Her friends were huddled around them.

“Sorry – I must have dozed off,” she muttered. “What time is it?”

“We’re heading down to dinner now,” said Harry. “Come get something to eat with us, you’ve barely had anything since yesterday afternoon.”

“I know, but….” Hermione turned back to Seto. He was still asleep, and his head had turned away from her.

“You know Madame Pomfrey would run you out of here before long anyway,” said Ron, “You’ve been up here since we left this morning.”

Hermione sighed, leaned down, and placed her book back into her bag.

“I don’t know much about your Arithmancy class,” said Ryou, “But…if you want some help for your exam tomorrow….”

“I should be alright,” said Hermione, “But thanks.” It was then she noted the Honeydukes bag in Ryou hand. “What’s that?”

“Oh,” Ryou flushed, “We brought you these.”

Hermione peered into the bag to find a Deluxe Sugar Quill and a box of Honeyduke’s fudge.

“Thank you,” she smiled, “You really didn’t have to though…”

“We know,” said Ron, “But, we thought it would cheer you up, even if just a little.”

“We’ll take it up to the common room, and come back here…and then go down to eat?” said Harry.

Hermione nodded.

Yugi reached for her school bag. “We can take this too, if you want, so you don’t have to lug it down to dinner and back.”

“Alright, thanks.”

Once they had left, Hermione sat up a little straighter and smoothed out the blankets from where she had used them as a pillow.

“Sorry,” she said, “I’m not sure how long I dozed off. I guess I was more tired than I thought….”

Her eyes fell on the mangled cell phone on the bedside table and the potion bottles sitting behind it. “I’ll be heading down to dinner in a few minutes, and I’m trying to decide if I should bring something up for you.”

She picked up the second potion bottle from the table and looked it over. “I’m not quite sure how potent this was…if you’ll even have woken up by the time we would return. Knowing Madame Pomfrey, she’ll check you over and put you under again for the night. But…if your bones have healed up, maybe that means you’ll be released tomorrow.”

Hermione frowned. “Although…we have double of Umbridge tomorrow. _I_  wouldn’t mind skipping that one.”

Seto shifted again, and his head turned back towards her, his face blank.

A few minutes later, Harry poked his head around the doorway. “Ready?”

Hermione nodded and stood up. Taking his hand again, she leaned over and pressed her lips against his in a soft kiss.

“I’ll be back, I promise,” she whispered, giving his hand a gentle squeeze.

And to her surprise, his fingers squeezed back.


	8. The Christmas Ball (rewrite)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alternate Nerdship-style ending to _Of Lost Swords and Shadow Magic_ 's CH28. 
> 
> The Christmastime Ball at Hogwarts, only from a different POV.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> /Text/ Set to Seto.  
>  **/Text/** Seto to Set.

Seto was speaking quietly on his phone when Hermione stormed inside the empty classroom he had taken refuge, grabbed hold of a student chair from behind one of the desks, and dragged it noisily to the front table where he had set up his equipment. She sat down, bent over to cradle her head on her arms, and sighed. He gave a quick end to his call and placed the phone down.

Leaning back, Seto reached for his coffee mug, eyebrow raised as Set phased out of the Millennium Rod.

“Are you alright?” asked the spirit, when it seemed clear that Seto  _wasn’t_ going to say anything.

“Ugh…”

Seto gave Set a fleeting glance before regarding Hermione closely. “What did he do this time?”

Set frowned. “Who?”

Seto rolled his eyes at him.

Hermione drew herself upright. “They’re driving me mad.”

Set waved his arm frantically. “ _Who_?”

“Lavender and her friends,” Hermione said bitterly, “She must be pals with half the school at this rate. They won’t leave me alone.”

“They’ve never bothered you before…” said Set, confused, “So, why would they start now?”

Hermione sighed loudly again and cringed. “I…may have done something stupid.”

“‘Jinx an idiot in the corridor’ stupid, or ‘long-term regret’ stupid,” said Seto.

Hermione paused. The silence in the room told more than anything she might have said.

Set’s eyes widened. “ _Both!?”_

Seto closed his eyes for a moment before slowly turning to the priest. “ _Will you go back inside?_ ”

Set glared down at his host and the two waged some sort of silent fight for a solid minute before the spirit huffed and vanished back into the Millennium Rod.

Hermione didn’t seem fazed and continued to stare down at the table. “It started a few weeks or so after the Quidditch match…I was trying to find a way to get back at Ronald….and her friends kept making jabs about me and Quidditch players.”

Seto frowned. “You’re not even into Quidditch – not to the extent of everyone else around here, at least.”

Hermione bit her lip and ran her finger along a indent in the table’s surface, purposely not meeting Seto’s gaze. Just how much should she tell him? It’s not like her decision would have impacted him in the slightest – her choice of date for the ball was just that – her choice. She could go with whomever she wanted. …But why did these lingering feelings of guilt and disapproval seem to come up when she looked at him? Seto wasn’t going to the ball – it was no skin off  _his_ nose. He probably didn’t care who went with whom to the dance so long as they weren’t bugging him about it.

“…Or did your ‘something stupid’ involve the Pitch?”

“No…” said Hermione, though her voice seemed strained. “Not that…I didn’t jinx a bludger on Ron if that’s what you’re thinking….”

She shook her head again and got up suddenly, causing the chair to scrape loudly against the stone floor, making them both wince. “I’m sorry – I shouldn’t have bothered you, I know you’re busy. I-I’ll catch you later.”

Without even bothering to put her chair back, she was back out the door again.

Set phased back out of the Millennium Rod. “…What was  _that_ all about?”

Seto stared at the empty doorway for a few extra seconds before returning to his work. “No idea.”

* * *

Seto placed his laptop down onto one of the empty common room tables and made himself comfortable. Harry and Ron were getting ready for the ball with Yugi and Ryou, and he was tired of Yugi’s subtle attempts to get him to change his mind about not going down with them.

There would be no dinner in the Great Hall that evening, for food was going to be served at the dance. And for anyone who decided that they weren’t going to attend, small platters of sandwiches and drumsticks and jugs of pumpkin juice had been sent to each of the house common rooms from the Kitchens. So after the last afternoon class, the majority of the student body had rushed back to their dormitories to clean up and prepare for the night’s festivities.

It was to no one’s surprise that the guys began making their way down their dormitory staircase long before the girls. There were a few first year students that Seto recognized from the sorting ceremony sitting around with a moving chess set, apparently just as interested in attending Umbridge’s social gathering as he was.

A few of the older students (relatively, they were still a good few years younger than he was) made their way down into the common room, wearing dress robes of all sorts of styles. Despite Madam Malkin’s statement that any color would do, it seemed black was still the most popular color for dressy wizard wear. Not that he blamed them –  _his_ dress robes were black as well, and remained pressed and untouched, hanging at the end of his narrow wardrobe.

A few giggles were heard across the room as a pair of seventh years exited the girls’ staircase in bright, shockingly pink robes that could have rivaled Umbridge’s everyday ensembles. They eagerly met up with their dates near the portrait hole and exited out into the corridor.

Yugi and Ryou arrived downstairs next, the pair in similarly-cut black robes, joining Seto at the table. Ryou reached for one of the small sandwiches. “What’re you working on this time?”

“Answering emails from the meeting I missed this morning,” said Seto without looking up, “And making final arrangements for tomorrow.”

Yugi grinned slyly. “You know…there’s still time….”

“ _No_.”

Yugi turned to Ryou and shrugged. “It’s not like you  _need_ to have a date to go. Bakura and I are going alone.”

“You’re not going to change my mind, so you might as well give up,” said Seto.

Yugi shrugged. “I tried.”

“Good attempt,” said Ryou, patting Yugi’s shoulder. “So…you ready?”

Yugi looked back towards the stairs. “I think so. Even Harry got himself a partner, and he’s meeting up with her on the way, so we might as well go.”

Ryou swallowed the last of his snack. “Okay. I’m ready.”

Irritated, Seto brushed a few stray food crumbs away from his laptop, and went back to his emails.

From his peripherals, he saw another couple meet up and leave the common room. One of the first years lost his chess game and started swearing up a few interesting expletives before the board was reset and they started anew.

Harry and Ron exited the boys’ staircase a few minutes later. Harry left alone and Ron stood off to the side, awkwardly adjusting his bowtie every few minutes before Lavender arrived and they too disappeared down to the Great Hall.

They were the last of the couples waiting to head off, and aside from the few younger Gryffindors considerately minding their own business on the other side of the room, the common room quieted down…

…Until a hand clapped hard on Seto’s shoulder from behind, causing him to tense over completely, and a chair on the other side of the table was pulled out. Cormac McLaggen sat himself down, dressed to the nines, looking ridiculously pleased.

Seto barely spared him notice before going back to his paperwork. “…Can I help you?” he asked, not even bothering to hide the bite in his voice. Most people were smart enough to stay away from him, and definitely knew better than to  _touch_ him. It wasn’t something that he taught or told, or even had Yugi spread around. It was a fact that everyone just picked up: when he was knee-deep in work,  _do not disturb_.

A pair of seventh-years figured that out the hard way back in November. Clearly, McLaggen didn’t get the memo. Why he was bothering him now, after never even speaking a word to him before, was beyond him, and Seto really wasn’t interested in finding out why or what he wanted today. With any luck, his date would arrive, and they would both go and leave him once more in peace.

“I see you’re not going,” said Cormac, triumphantly, and that made Seto pause. Why was Cormac so glad that he was staying behind? What was it to him?

“An astute observation,” Seto said dully, signing his name on the bottom of a budget request. He shuffled the page to the bottom of the pile. “The rest of the school came to that conclusion several weeks ago.”

Cormac laughed. “Well, I can’t blame you. She’s quite a looker. If  _I_ had lost her, I wouldn’t have gone either. Though, I do have to wonder what it was that made her jump into my arms like that….”

/What is he even on about?/

**/Haven’t the slightest idea./**

Seto tuned out the rest of Cormac’s conversation and returned his focus to his laptop.  _Clearly_ , the idiot has him confused for someone else.

“…If I knew that staying at the library at all hours of the day and night for the last few weeks would get me  _the_ date, I would have done this in the beginning of term.”

Cormac looked at Seto with a gleeful smirk on his face. “No hard feelings, right?”

Seto was about ready to slam his pen down onto the table with enough force to probably break it. A shame too – this is the third one he had gone through in the last two weeks after the group of fifth year Ravenclaws tried to get clingy in the library, and he was running out of them. Seriously though – did McLaggen not see that he didn’t have a clue to what he was talking about?

He was about to tell the idiot off, if not for the movement by the girls’ staircase that caught his eye. Hermione stepped down, her dress a frosty blue that seemed to flutter about her as she walked, and her usual long curls pulled back into a sleek half-bun. Any words he was about to speak died off, and he froze, unable to look away. She looked beautiful.

Cormac had frozen too, but he seemed to recover first. “Was wondering when you were on your way down,” he said, getting to his feet. “Most everyone else had left already.”

“Oh, sorry,” she said, but she didn’t sound apologetic in the slightest. “I had trouble getting my hair just right.”

A million thoughts zoomed through Seto’s head all at once. Cormac’s boasting suddenly made much more sense now, but he still had to frown. If Hermione truly wanted to go down this petty road of revenge against Ron Weasley, surely she could have found someone else–  _anyone else –_ to take in McLaggen’s place.

Cormac laughed and jabbed at Seto’s arm, earning him a glare that would have sent most others running for the portrait hole. “ _Girls_.”

Seto turned back to Hermione and raised an eyebrow.  _“He_ ’s your date?”

Hermione could barely look him in the eyes. Instead, was  _very_ focused on the clasp of her bracelet.

“I told you I lucked out,” said Cormac, gloatingly, as he looped his arm around hers. “Ready?”

He didn’t even give her time to answer, instead practically dragged her towards the exit. Hermione managed to glance back, giving Seto the most apologetic look before she disappeared around the corner.

Seto stared at the back of the Fat Lady’s portrait long after it closed again. What was she sorry for? McLaggen’s behavior before she arrived? Her tardiness for getting to the party? That would have been towards McLaggen, certainly, but not  _him_.

/…I don’t blame her./ Set said from within the corridor between their soul rooms. With the few younger students out in the common room, he didn’t dare phase from the Millennium Rod currently stashed in the briefcase at Seto’s feet. /I would want to spend as little time in his company as possible./

**/She knew what she was getting into/** Seto huffed and turned back to his work, though he found it harder to concentrate on the paperwork now, and it wasn’t due to Set’s mental chatter. ****

/Perhaps./ Set said, his voice laced with worry. /And I’m sure the boy was boasting his story. I cannot see her ‘jumping into his arms’./

**/It’s a figure of speech./**

Set rolled his eyes. /I am not dense, Seto. I may not have been out and about as long as the Pharaoh or the Tomb Thief, but I am not unfamiliar with how modern language works./

**/I know./** Seto said to himself bitterly.  **/The first thing you did was break into _my_ head./**

/It was part of the bonding process/ Set said stiffly /It was near instantaneous. You were not harmed./

Seto glared at his laptop, twirling the pen in his hand.  **/No, you just gave me severe burns and knocked me out. In that regard, you’re no different than the Shadow that keeps showing up./**

Set pushed himself off the soul corridor wall and crossed his arms./We are  _nothing_ alike. And your injuries were healed by magic before the day was done./

**/Dumbledore’s suspiciously-timed arrival is beside the point. I sure as hell didn’t give you blanket access to my thoughts and memories./**

Set threw his hands up in the air and huffed loudly. /Alright – I admit I was forward the day I was released from the Millennium Rod.  _Happy_? But are you going to sit there and say you wouldn’t have been curious about your host, should  _you_ have been trapped for 5,000 years?/

**/I wouldn’t have stuck my brain into a hunk of gold in the first place./**

Set started spewing again, but Seto stopped paying attention. Something about lost memories, but he checked out the instant ‘destiny’ sounded through his head.

He went back to answering his backlog of messages, despite it being the weekend now in Japan. No one would be back in the office until Monday, and he would have the entire train ride and following flight to clear out his inbox.

Despite his attempts to focus, he couldn’t help but find himself sparing fleeting looks back to the portrait hole. If he kept staring at it, would Hermione come back in, admit that she made a mistake choosing to take McLaggen to the ball…and… then what? Ask  _him_ if he wanted to go? He had assured the group ten times over that he had no intention of going to the party.

Seto scowled at his keyboard. …Was  _that_ the reason why she chose someone as conceited as McLaggen? Because she knew he would turn her down if she asked, because he turned down all of the other girls that came looking for a partner?

Seto paused, his hands hovering just over the keys. … _Would_ he have said no?

He leaned back in his chair and pinched the bridge of his nose as Set chirped again. /You’re feeling guilty? Over what?/

Seto sighed, spared the portrait hole another glance, and reached for his briefcase.

/What are you doing?/

**/I can’t focus./**

/Clearly./

Seto took the steps up to his dormitory two at a time, and dropped the briefcase onto his bed. Back in relative privacy, Set spirited back out as Seto tugged his uniform tie from his neck. “Are you turning in early?”

Seto snorted. “At half-past six? That’s a bit  _too_ early.”

Set’s eyes widened as the dress robes were taken out of the wardrobe. “I thought you weren’t planning on going.”

“I wasn’t.”

“The plan has obviously changed,” said Set, a sly smile forming on his face. “Why?”

“I don’t know, Set,” Seto snapped, “I didn’t realize I have to answer for every decision I make. Why don’t you just go roam through my head and figure it out?”

Set ignored the barb and hovered near the standing mirror as Seto disappeared to the bathroom adjoined to the dormitory and turned on the shower. /It doesn’t take a genius to know why. You care for her. As do I. It was clear once she arrived in the common room that she was going to be miserable for the night. But, as you said, she’s made her choice. What do you think you’ll really be able to do?”

**/Well, my plans for the evening have been ruined. Might as well return the favor./**

Set narrowed his eyes. Ruin whose evening? Certainly not Hermione’s. Hers was already shot. McLaggen’s? /What are you up to?/

**/Oh, I don’t know, Set/** Seto said casually. A little  _too_ casually **. /Prevent some long-term regrets. If I’m lucky, maybe I’ll get to jinx an idiot in the corridor./**

Set's follow up was met with nothing but silence, and he sighed, and went to pacing the stretch of floor between the door and the center-most window in the room. He didn't catch the water turning off or Seto returning back into the room, dressed for the ball. Before he knew it, Seto had finished adjusting his tie in the mirror and was out the door. But the Millennium Rod was still in the briefcase.

“Hey!” He called, and then groaned. /Seto, you forgot –/

He couldn’t go after him, not with the chance of the other Gryffindors seeing him. But it was too late. Seto didn’t seem interested in returning, and Set was forced to vanish back into the Millennium Rod as soon as Seto stepped out of Gryffindor Tower.

* * *

Under the premise of drinks and a table, Hermione shuffled her way through the thick throng of students swarmed in the middle of the Great Hall. The minute Cormac disappeared back into the party, she turned on her heel and fled the Hall, hurrying past a huge stone gargoyle and out into the courtyard, decorated with falling snowflakes (despite the clear, starry night), and twinkling fairy lights around the perimeter.

A few other couples had strayed from the Great Hall and were scattered about, mingling quietly amongst themselves and munching on food taken from the ball.

Hermione moved towards the back side of the large fountain, sitting along the stone edge with her back to the doors leading back inside. What a disaster the night turned out to be. Her ears felt like they were going to fall off from listening to Cormac all evening. He put  _Gilderoy Lockhart_ to shame.

Despite the warm torches and lights floating throughout the courtyard, Hermione shivered. It may not be real snow falling from the sky, but it was still December, and it was  _cold_  outside. But she dare not go back into the Great Hall, where the fireplaces warmed the ball. While she was certain she could just go find Harry and the others, she didn’t want to run into Ron and Lavender. They probably had their hands all over each other, like she had found them on more than one occasion in the corners of the corridors, or flat out in the common room for all to see.

And she  _definitely_ didn’t want to run back into Cormac. He had treated her like some prize to be touted around to his various guy-friends (also just as sickeningly narcissistic), and was  _much_ more physical with her than she was comfortable. A kiss or two under a mistletoe was to be expected, should it happen (ooh – and it  _did,_ and she started suspecting he was creating them on the sly as the night went on), but at times he was worse than Ron and Lavender.

Her stomach grumbled, and she sighed. The thought of dinner, or a snack,  _something_ , sounded heavenly, but she couldn’t gather the courage to go back inside. Despite the chill working its way through her, it was more soothing to freeze out here than go back where there was warm food and friends.

She happened to look to the side as a couple started back towards the door and spied a tray of snacks on a different side of the fountain. Hermione began to reach for one before the male Ravenclaw passing by stopped her.

“Oh, you don’t want those, Granger.”

“Why?” she asked, “What are they?”

“Dragon tarter crisps,” said the Ravenclaw, “I swear the last person who tried one made a run for the loo not long afterwards. And it gives you horrid breath.”

She quickly withdrew her hand. “Thanks for the tip.”

“No problem. See you around.”

Hermione eyed the tray. Maybe she’d feed them to Cormac if he managed to find her out here. …Although, knowing her luck, he wouldn’t get an adverse effect from them, and then she’d be stuck with not only him, but him with nasty breath for the rest of the evening. And there was no way she’d kiss him again if she smelled that on him.

Come to think of it, she had probably kissed him more times this evening than Ron had Lavender the entire week _._ The thought made her feel slightly ill, taking away her sudden desire for food.

She wasn’t sure how long she sat there, perched on the fountain’s edge, hugging her bare arms, but the few other people that had been out in the courtyard had since returned inside the castle, no doubt to warm up and dance the rest of the night away.

A quick glance into the water confirmed exactly how she felt.  _What a mess._  Her hair started falling from her half-bun, her lipstick had smudged, and her dress had gotten slightly rumpled. Hermione dipped her fingers into the water and wiped away the smear on her cheek before turning away with a sigh. What was the point in fixing herself up again? Cormac was bound to find her and drag her back to the party, and she was bound to get messed up all over again.

Unless she left. She supposed that was always an option, but that ruined everything. The whole point in seeking out Cormac McLaggen was to make Ron jealous at the ball. So far, all it seemed to do was engage Cormac in all the wrong ways and give her a most miserable time.

And just like that, even indirectly, Ron Weasley ruined her second experience at a Hogwarts dance.

She heard a faint rustle of fabric, and then jumped, startled, as something was draped over her shoulders. To her surprise, Seto, dressed in a five-piece suit – minus the jacket - sat down next to her.

Hermione looked down. He had given her his suit coat. It was longer than a traditional Muggle jacket, and it felt  _expensive_ under her fingers as she drew it closer. Hermione couldn’t help but stare as her cheeks flushed. She had seen him in suits of course, it was his preferred dress when he traveled to and from Domino during term, but he looked  _striking_ in his dress robes.

He leaned forward slightly, rested his arms loosely against his legs, and looked pointedly at the ground. When he sighed, she quickly turned away, so he wouldn’t catch her staring. She felt an odd sense of déjà vu, only she wasn’t practicing her Transfiguration under Gryffindor Tower. This was the Christmastime ball, and it wasn’t Ron Weasley she was avoiding this time, but someone far worse.

But…why was Seto here? He clearly had no desire to dress up all fancy and join the festivities. What changed?

They sat in a weird silence. It soon became clear that he wasn’t going to start off the conversation. “I…” she began, then stopped, regathered her thoughts, and tried again. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“I didn’t expect to  _be_ here.”

Hermione tilted her head inquisitively. “Then what…”

“I am here,” said Seto, straightening back up in his spot. He turned to her, taking in her mussed hair and the slight wrinkles that formed on her dress, “To keep you from making  _another_ stupid decision.”

Her face reddened, and she turned away from him, withdrawing into his coat.

“I suppose you understood what I was referring to then, that day in the classroom,” she muttered.

Seto snorted. “I think you’ve gone beyond ‘long-term regret’. You can’t sit there and tell me you’ve been oblivious to McLaggen’s silent actions this entire term, and  _didn’t_ think this would end badly.”

“I…I just wanted to get back at Ronald,” she said, and it sounded rather petty and pathetic. “Him and Lavender. And…I…I thought  _he_ would annoy him the most. Things…just didn’t work out that way.  _At all_.”

Seto snorted. “You could have asked  _anyone,_ and it would have worked just the same.”

Hermione shook her head. “If you weren’t so insistent on  _not_ going, I might’ve asked  _you_.”

“Thanks for leaving me out of your petty squabble,” said Seto, though the slight bite in his voice didn’t have much meaning now, considering where he still ended up. “If you were planning to use me as a tool, I  _definitely_ wouldn’t have considered it.”

Hermione looked up, surprised. “So if I just simply wanted a date, a partner for the evening, no strings attached, you would have said yes?”

Seto froze. True, he wanted no part in being an instrument in a lovesick revenge plot, but under normal circumstances?  _Would he?_   He always hated balls and galas. Pegasus tried to swindle him into them at any given opportunity. He went to the ones his position at Kaiba Corp and rank in the tournament industry required him to attend, but he didn’t enjoy them by any means.

But a school dance? Knowing what sort of gossip would follow him – follow them  _both_  – during and afterwards?

Seto looked down at his hands before turning to her. “Let’s put it  _this_ way – if I knew that my refusal would make you throw yourself at  _McLaggen_ , I would have conceded.”

Hermione huffed. “I didn’t  _throw myself_ at him.”

“Then his account of your asking him is quite off.”

Hermione snorted and smoothed out her dress. “He’s… _ugh._ You know I haven’t had a word in edgewise this whole evening? I’ve been subjected to ‘1000’ – or however many – ‘Great Saves by Cormac McLaggen’, or ‘my relative is super influential in the Ministry of Magic, and I get to have summers with the Minister each year’. All he knows how to do is bolster his ego.”

Seto studied her appearance again. “You mean when he  _isn’t_  trying to eat you alive?”

Hermione raised an eyebrow at him.

He gave her a pointed look. “You’re a mess.”

Hermione shook her head and turned away from him. “You sure know how to flatter a girl, don’t you?”

“It’s merely an obvious observation,” said Seto, and he paused. The next question on the tip of his tongue was an awkward one, to say the least, and he didn’t want to seem  _curious_ , because what Hermione chose to do on her date was her business, not his.

But McLaggen’s remarks in the common room definitely didn’t sit right with him. “Did  _you_ initiate all that?”

Hermione glanced upwards at the starry sky, and gave a sarcastic dry laugh. “As if I had any will of my own tonight. Well…maybe that’s not entirely true. I may have done the  _first_ mistletoe, but  _I_ swear, it was a  _peck_. He’s started everything else.  _I_ certainly didn’t ask for…,” she gestured to herself, “… _this_.”

Seto’s jaw tensed. “Did you tell him to stop?”

Hermione rolled her eyes.

Seto’s narrowed dangerously.

“If I had known,” she began, “That my evening would turn into the sum of Ron and Lavender’s entire relationship, I would have rather gone by myself and stayed with Harry and Yugi and the others. I saw a peek of them at one of the tables when I rushed out of the Great Hall. It looked like Harry took Luna, but they were all sitting around having a good time.”

“You can go back and join them.”

Hermione shook her head, a little too quickly, and a few more strands of hair fell out of her bun. “I don’t want to see him in there. He’s probably looking for me. And I don’t really want to see Ron and Lavender joined at the face under mistletoe. I’ve had enough of those for a good several Christmases.”

Hermione’s stomach gave another gurgle and she turned beet red.

Seto raised an eyebrow. “You haven’t eaten?”

“Haven’t had the chance, really,” said Hermione bitterly. “I’ve been stuck on his arm the entire time, as he shuffled me around with his friends who are just as vile as he is. If we haven’t been with his friends, it’s been snogging, or in the middle of the crowd without being able to get away.” She sighed loudly, shoulders slumping, and ran her fingers along the edge of his coat. “This has just been a terrible evening.” With her other hand she wiped a stray tear from her eye. “It seems with nights like these, I can’t catch a break.”

“ _There you are, Granger_!”

Hermione froze, clutching Seto’s coat tightly in her hand. Quickened footsteps approached from the opposite side of the fountain.

Seto leaned over and whispered in her ear. “You don’t have to go back with him, if you don’t want to. Make your voice heard, and if he won’t listen,  _make_ him.”

She swallowed, and nodded as Cormac McLaggen rounded the fountain. “I was wondering when –”

Seto glared at him.

Cormac looked between the two of them before his eyes set on Seto. “ _You_.  _You’re_  not supposed to be here.”

Seto raised his eyebrows. “Oh. I wish someone  _told_ me ahead of time that I was to be tethered to Gryffindor Tower for the evening, so I wouldn’t have gone through the bother of dressing up.”

Hermione looked to Seto curiously as he got up from the fountain’s edge and gestured half-heartedly, either for her or for his coat - she wasn't sure - but she did note he looked amused that she didn’t seem eager in the slightest to hand it back.

“Yeah, well, Hermione and I have a date,” said Cormac, holding his hand out to Hermione. “Come on, Roger and Don got a table that we can join.”

Hermione got up, but stepped around his outstretched arm. “Actually, Cormac,” she said, “I don’t feel so good. I think I’m going to head back to the common room early.”

She tried to move out of his reach, but he was faster, and pressed two fingers against her forehead. “You look flushed, probably from sitting out here all this time. What you need is a bite to eat. Let’s go.”

Hermione drew back from him, and at the same time caught a whiff of Seto’s cologne from his jacket. Her cheeks may have been pink, but it certainly wasn’t because of the winter evening.

“No,” she said fiercely, “Cormac, I really don’t want to go back inside the Great Hall.”

Cormac paused, and then nodded. “Okay. Fair enough. It is rather busy in there. I’ll bring you a plate out here.” He looked Seto up and down, sizing him up. “ _You_ can go now.”

“She’s got my jacket,” said Seto, lightly. “The last time I gave her something, she never returned it.”

Hermione’s cheeks went reddened even further. The Kaiba Corporation sweater she borrowed the other week during the last snowstorm was sitting on her bedside chair.

Cormac gestured, annoyed. “All right, Hermione give him back his coat so he’ll be on his way.”

“Sorry, it was just cold out here,” she muttered, but didn’t move to take it off.

Cormac waggled his eyebrows. “I’m sure we can find a way to keep warm.”

Hermione shook her head, visibly disgusted, and didn’t miss Seto’s eye twitch. “No, I’m sorry, Cormac, but I don’t think I’m going to stay for the evening. I’m going back upstairs.”

Cormac’s eyes narrowed, looked from her to Seto and back again, before he stepped closer to Seto now. “Are you  _stealing_ my date?”

“I’m not  _stealing_ anything,” Seto countered. “Perhaps if you treated your date  _better,_ she wouldn’t be uncomfortable around you.”

“Don’t be daft,” Cormac snarled, tugging Hermione back towards the Great Hall.

“ _Let go_ ,” Hermione hissed, yanking out of his grip. “I’m  _not_ going back inside with you, Cormac.”

Whatever retort he was likely to make never came out. The instant he reached for her again, Seto stepped forward, but before he could say or do anything, Hermione had shot her arm out and slugged Cormac right in the jaw, knocking him backwards against the edge of the fountain.

Hermione glared at him. “Now,  _I’m leaving_. If you follow me, I won’t hesitate to jinx you with  _every_ hex I know.”

She stormed off, leaving both of them at the fountain.

Cormac rubbed his jaw before getting back to his feet and right up into Seto’s face. They were near the same height, but Cormac was bulkier, and he attempted to use it to his advantage to seem intimidating. “I don’t know  _what_ you said to her, but this isn’t over, Kaiba.”

Seto snorted. “I  _told_ her to stand up for herself. But you’re not worth my time, so this  _is_ over.” He clapped his hand hard on McLaggen’s shoulder, a vicious smirk on his face. “But  _no hard feelings._ ”

Hermione was on one of the steps leading back upstairs when he made it back inside, his coat still around her shoulders, a semi-triumphant smile on her face. “That felt good.”

Seto chuckled. “I bet. Come on.” He beckoned her down a side corridor, away from the steps leading into the Grand Staircases.

“Where are we going?”

“To get you something to eat, for one thing,” said Seto, “Considering you don’t feel like returning to the party.”

“It’s fine, really,” Hermione said quickly. “I can just as easily go back to the common room where there’s food. The night’s already ruined; I might as well turn in early.”

He led her down a set of stairs and towards a painting of a bowl of fruit. “Look, McLaggen is an idiot for sure, but you don’t have to let him destroy what’s left of your evening.”

Hermione shrugged as he began tickling the pear in the painting. “I don’t see what else there is to do.”

“Well,” Seto said shortly, “I didn’t get dressed up just to fall short of jinxing a moron in the courtyard. And I  _did_ say that I was going to keep you from making more terrible decisions.”

“Are you trying to tell me that going back upstairs is a terrible idea?”

Seto paused as the pear turned into a door handle, which swung open into the Kitchens. What  _was_ he even doing? He did his good deed of the year and got McLaggen away from Hermione (which she did well enough of on her own). They could have both just returned to Gryffindor Tower without any of this. She could turn in early, like she said, and he could return to work, and listen to Set’s irritated mood for leaving him stranded up there this entire time.

Instead, he was doing what – getting her food from the kitchens…and then? There  _was_ food back in the common room after all. To stop here first meant that he would be taking her somewhere else afterwards, right?

For someone who had five different contingency plans built into his dueling deck at any given time, he was doing an awful lot of improvising lately.

Dobby rushed forward to greet them as the other house elves stayed back, wary. It seemed they haven’t forgotten her prior attempts to free them during the TriWizard Tournament.

Hermione stayed back near the entrance to the Kitchens as Seto spoke quietly with Dobby. Off to the side, she could see Winky on a stool by a fireplace, staring down into the bottom of an empty Butterbeer bottle, her face pale as she rocked back and forth.

She didn’t realize how long she was staring until Seto walked back up to her with a small basket of something hooked over his arm, and  _two_ of his travel mugs. She hadn’t the slightest idea where  _those_ came from. Dobby more than likely summoned them from the dormitory.

She followed him back out of the Kitchens and towards the Grand Staircases.

“…I’m sorry,” she said randomly. “I should have returned your sweatshirt ages ago. I didn’t mean to hoard it.”

Seto chuckled. “Keep it, I can get them easily.” He eyed the coat to his suit. “Now,  _that_ I would like back when the evening’s over.”

Hermione nodded.

She followed him all the way up past the seventh floor. “…The only thing up here is the Astronomy Tower.”

“I know.”

She raised an eyebrow. “We’re having dinner up there? It’s not quite appropriate, is it?”

“Well you won’t get accosted up here, will you?” said Seto. “I hope you weren’t too fond of the snow down there, because I’m not bothering to recreate it.” He handed her one of the travel mugs, stepped out onto one of the balconies used for classes, and conjured two chairs.

“A bit chilly up here,” she said, rubbing her arms. Hermione reached into the pocket of her dress, barely visible in the pleating, produced her wand and created her blue flame jar. “ _Engorgio_.”

Seto watched the blue flames flicker. “You made one of those in my dorm once. I remember seeing it when I returned from Domino.”

Hermione nodded. “I suppose you can say it’s a specialty of mine.”

She reached into the basket. Dobby had prepared two plates of the food from the Great Hall, an assortment of meats and potatoes, with a smaller bowl of fruit at the bottom of the bin. Despite the cool air around them, the plates must have been charmed to keep the food warm.

Hermione peered at the mug. “Is that coffee?”

“Mine is,” said Seto, “You should have tea.”

She passed him a plate, and couldn’t help but blush as his fingers brushed hers, if only for a moment. “Thank you,” she said. “Really, you didn’t have to go through the trouble.”

Seto merely shrugged, and reached back for a fork left behind in the basket between them.

They ate in relative silence until most of their plates were gone.

“So…what now?” she asked, a smile on her face, “What other surprises do you have?”

Seto held his mug in both hands, keeping his fingers warm. It  _was_ cold up here, but his suit was at least layered. She needed his coat more than he did.

“I…haven’t made it that far,” Seto admitted, feeling rather awkward. He was truly running this night blind. Is this what it felt like to be Joey Wheeler in a duel? Making his moves on the fly and hope something pans out of it? What a terrible strategy. 

Hermione looked around them. “Well…this  _is_ the Astronomy Tower. Have you taken any classes before?”

“Not particularly,” said Seto, “My education was rather streamlined. I know the basics, but have never taken a specific course on the subject.”

“Hm…”

“May I ask…what you two are doing all the way up here?” said a stern voice behind them.  Hermione jumped and twisted around to see Professor McGonagall in the doorway back into the corridor, arms crossed. 

“Oh, Professor!” Hermione squeaked.

“Escaping the crowd,” said Seto.

“Hm,” said Professor McGonagall, striding forward, “The ball is downstairs.”

“I know,” said Hermione, “but…”

“And I  _ought_ to have you sent back to Gryffindor Tower, Miss Granger, for attacking another student.”

Hermione paled.

“ _Or_ have house points taken. You know perfectly well violence is not tolerated.” Professor McGonagall gave them both a wry smile. “However, Professor Flitwick and I watched the debacle in the courtyard unfold, and it was his insistence that you gave a mean right hook that made me change my mind.”

Hermione looked to Seto and back, confused. “…Professor?”

“While the rest of the staff would  _prefer_ that all the students stay congregated down in the Great Hall this evening, Professor Umbridge  _didn’t_ make it a stipulation of the ball.” Professor McGonagall waved her wand, converting both of their chairs into a single lounge with a large blanket draped across the top. Another wave and the main telescope along the parapet wall shrunk down into a handheld sized one.

“Do remember that this evening’s curfew is 2am,” said Professor McGonagall, “I will assure Mr. Filch that the Astronomy Tower is empty  _so long_ as you leave for Gryffindor Tower on time. And do set the room right when you’re finished.”

“Yes Professor,” Hermione smiled, “Thank you.”

“Consider yourselves lucky  _Dolores Umbridge_ didn’t follow you two up here,” said Professor McGonagall, “Good evening.”

Hermione turned to Seto once Professor McGonagall had gone. “…What just happened?”

Seto looked to the chaise lounge in the middle of the open balcony and picked up the handheld telescope. “…I think you were about to teach me Astronomy.”

Hermione hesitated for a moment before joining him on the couch, drawing her legs up along the seat and leaning against him as he drew the warmed blanket –  _of course it was magically heated –_ around them.

She felt Seto reach into the pocket of his vest and pull out his phone. “W-what are you doing?”

Seto smirked. “Setting the alarm for 1am, because I really don’t want to find Umbridge waiting for us at the bottom of the Tower should we be late getting out of here.”

“Good plan,” Hermione said, snuggling into his side. She handed him the telescope. “So – what do you want to look at first?”

Seto passed the telescope back. “You’re the expert.  _You_ show  _me_.”

* * *

_Bzzzz. Bzzzz. Bzzzz._

The faint buzz stopped, and then started back up again, rousing Hermione from her sleep. She slowly forced her eyes open, trying to clear the fog from her vision, and the sudden breeze caused her to shiver.

It took her a moment to realize that she wasn’t back in her room in Gryffindor Tower – she was on the  _Astronomy_ Tower…on a chaise that was ridiculously out of place along the tower balcony.

… _And_ that she had been using Seto’s chest for a pillow.

Hermione quickly pulled away from him, red-faced, dislodging the blanket that was  _still_ radiating heat. His suit coat was still draped over her shoulders like a cape, and he was still completely out, his head resting along the backrest corner of the lounger. Unlike Yugi’s accounts of how little sleep Seto got on a regular basis (from either overworking, or an attack from the Shadow – or  _both_ ), he looked to be peacefully slumbering, with the small handheld telescope resting loosely in his hand.

_Bzzzz. Bzzzz. Bzzzz…_

The noise came from his vest pocket, but she didn’t dare reach for it. Instead she gave his shoulder a gentle nudge, feeling incredibly guilty to have to wake him up. But it had to have been at least a few hours after they made it up here, for even with his coat and the warm blanket, it was still cold. The temperature must have dropped.

Seto blinked his eyes open almost instantly.

“Sorry,” he said, straightening up in his seat, “What were we looking for?”

Hermione giggled and drew her end of the blanket a little tighter. “I don’t remember,” she said, yawing, “I think we both dozed off. And your phone…”

He had already pulled it from his pocket, and frowned at the time displayed on the screen before turning off the alarm. “ _Dozed off_ is an understatement,” he said. “That was more or less a  _nap_. It’s time to head back before Umbridge sends out the search parties.”

Hermione slid off the couch, a moment shaky in her heels and straightened out the wrinkles in her dress. She had been all tucked up for so long that her limbs were stiff.

It had only taken a few minutes to reset the Astronomy Tower to its original appearance. The couch vanished, and the handheld telescope transfigured itself back into its normal form along the edge of the parapet.

The Grand Staircases were mostly empty, save for a few stragglers heading back to the dormitories. The Great Hall would soon be closing, signaling the end of the ball, and Hermione expected most of the school were already back in bed, getting in the last hours of sleep before making the journey back to the Hogwarts Express in the morning.

“Are you excited?” she asked as the set of steps they currently stood on detached from the wall and floated its way to a seventh floor landing. “To be finally going home for more than just work, I mean.”

Seto nodded. “I am. Mokuba will be home from school, but Kaiba Corp will only be closed for half of the time. It  _will_ be nice to get some work done from the comfort of my office, and not the common room or some offbeat classroom. I’m surprised no one found a magical solution for how drafty this place is. Wizards adapted to Muggle plumbing, but couldn’t insulate the windows?”

Hermione chuckled. “It’s just one of those things, I guess. Well,  _I_ for one am excited to travel someplace new on holiday. Yugi and Ryou have spoken so much about Domino City and their friends. I can’t wait to see it for myself.”

“Hm,” Seto mused as they made it to the landing and started down the corridor. “Just remember we’re not taking Portkeys or whatever ridiculous wizard travel you people have. I have a jet waiting in London, so it’s going to be a long flight back to Japan.”

“I know,” she said, “I’ve got books packed for the journey.”

Hermione stopped in front of the Fat Lady’s portrait. “Baubles.”

The Fat Lady huffed and yawned  _obnoxiously loud_. “You lot are  _still_ out of bed?”

Seto rolled his eyes. “Technically the party is still going on, so we’re not late.”

The Fat Lady scowled. “I  _was_ trying to sleep!”

“You can sleep for two weeks while we’re all gone,” Seto snapped. _“Baubles_.”

“Humph!,” the Fat Lady bristled. “But you two better be the last ones!”

She swung the portrait open, and Seto started to go inside, but he stopped, surprised, as Hermione reached out and grabbed hold of his hand. He looked down at her hand, and then up at her, and found her cheeks reddened again.

“Before we go back inside…” she said, “I…I just want to say thanks, for everything tonight.”

Seto raised an eyebrow.

“You didn’t have to leave the tower,” she continued, “I know you didn’t want to go…but…I’m really glad you did, and saved me from Cormac.”

Seto shook his head. “ _You_ were the one who bruised his jaw. That was all you.”

“Not just that, but for everything after,” she said, blushing further, and stepped up closer to him, heart pounding.

He shrugged, but before he could say anything, she pressed down on his shoulders, and kissed him. His eyes widened as she suddenly pulled away, looking a cross between startled and scared.

“I…” she stammered. Did she go too far? Great – afriendship instantly ruined by her next bad decision this night. Would he instantly label her a fangirl like all the others and find sneakier places to hide around that even she wouldn’t find? “I-I’m sorry.”

“Oh, don’t be,” said a voice from the other side of the portrait hole, and they both quickly turned to see Ginny leaning on the side of the wall at the end of pass-between from the corridor outside and the inside common room wall. “But if you don’t kiss her back, I’ll be extremely disappointed.”

Hermione, not wanting to hold onto Seto while still blushing furiously, tugged his coat further around her shoulders and hugged her arms to her chest. “What?”

Ginny grinned slyly, and pointed upwards with her wand to the bit of mistletoe that  _definitely_ wasn’t there three seconds ago.

Seto looked up and glared at her.  _“Really_?”

“Now look here,” said Ginny fiercely, “I had to watch my brother suck face with Lavender Brown  _all night_. I’m not going to ever get that flushed from my mind for the rest of my life, but at least you two are cute together.” She pushed herself off the wall and crossed her arms in mock intimidation. “And also I’m blocking the way in.”

Hermione cringed, “I think I’ve seen enough mistletoe for one evening.”

“Yeah, but  _I’m_  not McLaggen,” said Seto, glancing back up at the mistletoe. And without warning, he cupped her chin with his hand and kissed her back. She froze, startled, but then wrapped a hand around the back of his neck, and the other rested again on his shoulder, keeping him from straightening back up as he pulled her closer.

“ _Are you going inside or not?”_ screamed the Fat Lady.

“Oh shut it,” Ginny snapped.

Hermione pulled back, noting that her cheeks weren’t the only ones red now. “So…um…”

Seto raised an eyebrow.

“Does…does this change anything?”

“Should it?” Seto said, and led her past Ginny and into the common room. It was mercifully empty. “It was mistletoe at Christmas. That’s tradition.”

“Well,  _that,_ yes, but I-I don’t know,” Hermione said. “I…don’t want to make things awkward…”

Ginny snorted. “Even  _more_ awkward than they already are?”

Both Seto and Hermione turned to her.

Ginny held up her hands and moved towards the girls’ staircase. “Okay, okay. I’m leaving. But seriously, Hermione, next time you have to find a date for something – don’t pick the biggest idiot around.”

Once alone, in the warmth of the common room, Hermione handed his jacket back. “Thank you again,  _really_. I had a lovely time.”

Seto gave a single nod.

“I hope…I don’t run into Cormac at breakfast…or on the train,” she cringed. “Tomorrow’s going to be awkward, isn’t it?”

“Probably. But if he has half a brain in his head, he’ll have learned something and will keep his distance. And if not, you can always make good on your threat to hex him.”

Hermione sighed. “That’s not necessarily ideal.”

“Alright, fine. But  _I_ have little tolerance for bullies.”

“Don’t get into trouble before we’ve even left,” said Hermione. “You know Umbridge will look for any opportunity to take away someone’s happiness around here.” She paused. “And  _please_ don’t go picking a fight with him. He’s twice your size.”

It didn’t much matter  _how_ big he was, Seto thought. Kemo was roughly a bit larger than McLaggen, and he didn’t have  _any_ problem taking that oaf down on Pegasus’s island. Seto gave a half-hearted shrug and paused at the bottom step of the boys’ staircase.

“I’ll be heading to the train early to find an empty booth to hide,” he said, “I want to catch up with Mokuba and make some calls before it gets too late in Domino. If you need a place to disappear for a while….”

Hermione nodded. “I might take you up on it.”

“Good,” Seto said, the words flowing from his mouth before he could even realize what he was saying. “I wouldn’t have offered otherwise.”

Hermione felt her cheeks redden again and turned back to head upstairs. “I’ll see you at breakfast tomorrow?”

“Mhm.”

“Alright. Good night, Seto.” She continued up to the sixth years’ room, and got ready for bed, her heart lighter. Parvati was already in bed, and Lavender was still gone, but Hermione didn’t care. She felt happier now than she had all week – possibly all month. Tomorrow she would be leaving for a new adventure, and she let her excitement carry her to sleep.


	9. Conspiracy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Post-series] A plan is put into motion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This can be considered the prologue to [_New Chapters_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18182579/chapters/43006736).

Roland rapped his knuckles hard against the open door before walking into the office and taking a seat in front of the desk without waiting for any acknowledgement or invitation from his employer.

He probably wouldn’t have gotten one either, based on how laser-focused Seto Kaiba was in his task. His boss was taking intricate notes on a copy of _Hogwarts: A History_. Not on the subject matter but the book itself. A ruler was in one hand, and his other was scribbling down measurements.

The height and width, the thickness of the cover, down to which pages had the corners folded in _and how far into the page they were folded_.

It all seemed rather odd and unnecessary.

“If I may ask…” Roland began, after a brief bout of silence, “…just _what_ are you doing?”

Seto leaned back in his chair and put the ruler down. “What do you think I’m doing?”

Roland raised an eyebrow and reached for the paper full of numbers. He could think of a few things, but after running a very specific errand, only one of those ideas made the most sense. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were going to create a twin of that book.”

The corner of Seto’s lip curled upwards. “That _is_ what I’m doing.” He held out a hand. “I trust you’ve got it.”

Roland nodded once and pulled a small velvet box from his jacket pocket. Seto took it from him, opened it up, and examined the item inside rather closely. The little box was then closed and set off to the side.

“Perfect.”

Roland tilted his head and looked at the cover to _Hogwarts: A History_. “If you don’t mind my curiosity, Mr. Kaiba…why _that_ one?”

“It’s her favorite.”

“Ah,” said Roland. “Did she leave it for you until you two meet up again?”

“Not quite,” said Seto, leaning forward once more. He picked up _Hogwarts: A History_ and flipped it open to a random page. “She doesn’t know it’s here.”

“So you’re…creating a likeness of it to surprise her.”

“…That’s the general idea.”

Roland nodded slowly. “I take it the double is going to be more or less a box for a box.”

Seto set the book back down, moved the little velvet box next to it, and began comparing both their heights. “Something like that.”

“Sir, would it not be easier to procure an additional copy and work from that?”

“It would,” said Seto, and he laughed lightly. “But I’m not a fool. Hermione will murder me outright for vandalizing a book before she realizes the why in it all. And I’d like to live to see how this plays out.”

Roland chuckled. “I see. How close do you think you’ll get to the real thing?”

Seto raised an eyebrow. “Oh no – by the time I’m done, she won’t know the difference between the two.”

Roland raised both eyebrows this time. “That’s quite an endeavor. Are you going to use magic?”

Seto frowned and looked down towards the right drawer in his desk, where his wand was currently stashed away. “I could…”

The tone of his voice clearly meant otherwise.

“You don’t want to.”

“Not particularly,” said Seto, and he pulled it from its hiding place, setting it down next to _Hogwarts: A History_. “If there’s anything I learned while over there, aside from the weird, useless spells like turning matchboxes into buttons or how to make tea cups whistle – it’s that wizards don’t know how to function without these. Think about it: they use them for _everything_. Mrs. Weasley is a housewife. She enchants the objects in the house to help her cook and clean. The police use it as a sword and a shield. But take it away, and they don’t have anything. Drop them in a purely magic-less environment and they wouldn’t know the first thing of what to do.

“There’s no electricity. They use birds as their primary method of communication, and unless they’re using magic to turn on a light bulb, they work by torches and candles. It’s amazing how backward they live in comparison to us.”

Seto sighed. “And…there’s something _intimate_ about doing this myself. Magic is the easy way out. Might I use it to recreate some of these details?” He opened the book to a random page. “Probably. I’m not running this entire thing through a copier to replicate the pages. But I haven’t _made_ anything myself since the…”

He broke off, scowling at the desk. ...How long  _had_ it been?

“…Since the first duel disk?”

“Second. I wasn’t the sole engineer behind the Battle City disks, but I did put the prototype together.”

“Ah. I don't think I was back at headquarters yet then.”

Seto crossed his arms, trying to think back. It felt like it was so long ago, when he was stuck running around with his cards and duel disk, begrudgingly helping Yugi with saving the day time and time again. But in reality it was only a few years ago. From Dartz…to Voldemort and the corrupt British Ministry of Magic, and then the Shadow Magus and Zorc, it was one menace after another. Life didn’t truly settle down until after the Millennium Items disappeared for good. And _that_ wasn’t much more than a year ago.

“…I think they were already in production when you returned to work,” said Seto, “But…regardless. It’s been a while.”

Roland nodded. “…Does Mokuba know?”

“About this?” Seto gestured around at the desktop and snorted. “ _No_. His poker face isn’t _that_ good. The only ones who know about this are us.”

“And…if I may…when do you expect this to play out?”

Seto slouched back against his chair. “Ideally, by the end of September. I can only hold onto this for so long before she notices that it’s missing. To be frank, I’m surprised she hasn’t asked about it already.”

“She _has_ been rather busy.”

“I know,” Seto said, and he glanced at the previous week’s _Daily Prophet_. “The bill to open up some of the Centaurs’ old lands again is coming around next week. I wish I could see the look on _her_ face when the law gets rewritten and all that work gets thrown out.”

Roland tilted his head quizzically. “Miss Granger’s?”

Seto laughed. “No – _Dolores Umbridge_. Hermione is working to repeal all her old restrictions on magical creatures. I can only hope that in whatever cell that toad is in awaiting her trial, she’s foaming at the mouth.” 

**Author's Note:**

> If there is something specific you would like to see from these adorkable nerds, my [ask box](http://dxmichelle.tumblr.com/ask) is always open for more prompts!


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